358: Inside Mastercard’s AI Adoption Journey: CTO George Maddaloni on Building Trust, Detecting F...

George Maddaloni is the EVP and CTO for Operations at Mastercard, where he leads the performance and modernization of technology platforms serving more than 35,000 employees worldwide. He has previously held senior IT leadership roles at AIG, UBS, AT&T, GM, and Merrill Lynch, and currently serves on the board of SustainableIT.org. George earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from Fordham University.


In this conversation, we discuss:

• How Mastercard’s CTO thinks about the balance between innovation, trust, and regulation in one of the world’s most complex financial networks.
• The strategy behind modernizing Mastercard’s internal technology platforms to empower 35,000 global employees.
• Why a decade of AI experience changed how Mastercard approaches fraud, data, and customer confidence.
• The cultural shift that turned curiosity about AI into measurable progress across a global workforce.
• How a 50-year-old payments company keeps competing with startups by rethinking infrastructure from the ground up.
• George Maddaloni’s vision of the next era of payments and how technology might make transactions faster, safer, and nearly invisible.

Resources:

• Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter (https://aiandwork.beehiiv.com/subscribe)
• Connect with George on LinkedIn (  / georgemaddaloni  )
• AI fun fact article (https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2025...)
• On How To Create an Energy-Based Work System that Empowers Employees (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...)
• Other resources mentioned in this conversation: On decentralized AI in Banks and the Future of Finance with Paolo Ardoino, Tether CEO  (https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/epi...)