The company is also unveiling a new corporate signature and adopting a new corporate tagline, The Heart of Commerce, to reflect the company's globally integrated structure and its strategic vision of advancing commerce worldwide. "MasterCard Worldwide is a driving force at the heart of commerce, enabling global transactions and bringing insight into the payments process to make commerce faster, more secure and more valuable to everyone involved," said MasterCard Chief Marketing Officer Lawrence Flanagan. "The new corporate brand better represents the globally integrated structure and unique insights that MasterCard leverages to deliver business value to our customers, merchants, consumers and shareholders."

The familiar interlocking circles that symbolize MasterCard to millions of consumers around the world will continue to appear on all MasterCard-branded cards and at merchant acceptance locations around the world. MasterCard also will continue the award-winning global Priceless advertising campaign, now seen in 106 countries and in 49 languages.

"The launch of the new corporate brand identity follows an extensive analysis of the MasterCard brand and the value proposition it represents to constituents," said Flanagan. "As we took a close look at the company's unique competitive strengths, we recognized that MasterCard Worldwide is a leader in advancing relationships, insight and commerce around the world. We developed a new corporate brand to reflect the company's strengths in these areas, as well as MasterCard's leading role in defining the industry playing field."

The new corporate positioning will serve as a unifying business-to-business platform, and lead to global efficiencies in the way MasterCard Worldwide connects with customers, merchants and shareholders through all communications channels.

The three circles of the new corporate logo build on the familiar interlocking red and yellow circles of the MasterCard consumer brand, and reflect the company's unique, three-tiered business model as a franchisor, processor and advisor:

• As a franchisor, MasterCard Worldwide markets a strong family of brands worldwide, opening the door to commerce at more than 24 million merchant locations around the world.
  
• As a processor, MasterCard Worldwide enables efficient commerce on a global scale through its agile network that offers unsurpassed speed, integration and reliability. MasterCard technology helps banks differentiate themselves through a flexible, customizable processing platform.
  
• As an advisor, MasterCard Worldwide provides industry-leading insight and solutions that advance commerce. Through dedicated account teams and MasterCard Advisors, the only global consultancy focused exclusively on the payments industry, MasterCard provides strategic and operational solutions covering the payments process from end-to-end.

In addition to the MasterCard brand, which appears on MasterCard credit, debit and prepaid cards, other brands include Maestro, the global PIN-debit brand, Cirrus, the ATM brand, and MasterCard Advisors. These brands will not change, and MasterCard Worldwide will continue to support them as part of its strong brand family.

"We've had great success in nurturing brands that enjoy unsurpassed worldwide recognition and have represented us well to millions of consumers around the world," Flanagan said. "We will put that same level of expertise behind the new corporate brand, which will be part of an integrated brand platform that includes the existing MasterCard brands."