How Commercial Bank unlocked new sources of value in Qatar with Mastercard’s Pay for Value program

Introduction
Commercial Bank was incorporated in 1974 as the first private bank in Qatar. Since then, it has achieved many more pioneering milestones, from hiring Qatar’s first female teller and introducing the country’s first ATMs to becoming the first Qatari bank to establish a presence in international capital markets. In collaboration with key ecosystem players from across the globe, such as Mastercard, the bank continues to elevate its offerings to advance its track record of success.

The challenge
Commercial Bank is continuously looking to optimize the performance of its card portfolio and identified an opportunity to drive cross‑border spend among the cross-border-inactive cards in its portfolio. To motivate customers to start using these cards for international spend, the bank adopted Mastercard’s Pay for Value (P4V) model, the company’s global-first quantitative model with 100% variable fees.

Pay for Value is Mastercard’s outcome-led engagement model that connects commercial outcomes to measured value for our clients and partners, creating shared accountability for performance. Enabled by Mastercard’s end-to-end capabilities — from strategy and activation through to execution and performance tracking — it supports performance-linked engagements with clearly measured results.

In partnership with Mastercard Services team, Commercial Bank used targeted campaigns to engage its customers holding inactive and dormant cards to drive activation and cross-border spend. The bank, Mastercard’s long-term strategic partner, played a pivotal role in co-developing and validating the model that sets a new global benchmark for performance-based client engagements.

Pay for Value represents an evolution in how Mastercard collaborates with clients, building on a long-standing focus on value creation through a more outcome-based approach.

The results
Commercial Bank witnessed the reactivation of 10% of its cross-border-inactive cards in just two months, exceeding the target it set for Mastercard by 50%.

This led to a significant increase in cross-border payments during the campaign period and created potential for sustained behavior in the following months.

“In close collaboration with Mastercard, we are shaping a more insight-led approach to bringing timely initiatives to market that elevate the everyday value of our cards. This partnership reinforces our long-term focus on innovation and customer centricity across the cards business.” - Srikumar Chandrot, Head of Cards Issuing Business

“Our partnership with Mastercard has strengthened our cards strategy and enabled us to deliver more relevant, secure, and engaging customer experiences. Working side by side, we translated insight into action and deepened cardholder relationships across our portfolio.” - Dr. Sudheer Nair, Head of Cards & Payments