Mastercard has been supporting the LGBTQIA+ community for over a decade, under its “Acceptance Matters” platform.

Understanding the lived experience of people is central to ensuring authenticity. One of our creatives, who is Trans, shared a personal story about his credit card: a deli merchant called out his order based on the name on his credit card (which was his “dead name,” and feminine), putting his safety at risk. [Note: In the U.S. legally changing one’s name is very expensive, time-consuming and prohibitively difficult—especially in conservative states.]

Could Mastercard do something to actually remedy this problem? Mastercard doesn’t issue credit cards. Banks do. Mastercard makes cards work, but banks own the cards themselves, the cardholder relationships, and the credit.

A fundamental element of every card is broken for millions, so we couldn’t just fix it ourselves: we had to put Mastercard’s industry relationships on the line to convince banks.

For LGBTQIA+-identifying people, especially Trans and Nonbinary people who use chosen names, being called by the right name is not just a matter of expression: it’s also one of acceptance, and even physical safety.

In fact, we learned that 32% of Transgender people who’ve shown an ID card (such as a credit card) with a name or gender that didn’t match their gender presentation have been verbally harassed, denied benefits or service, asked to leave, or assaulted.

We realized this gave us not just an opportunity, but a duty to improve LGBTQIA+ people’s experiences with our products.

Mastercard has expressed its support for the LGBTQIA+ community at Pride events globally for more than a decade, and more brands today than ever are following our lead. However, more people than ever are also rightfully calling out shallow or opportunistic support versus meaningful impact. Many brands limit their support to Pride month or to simply ‘rainbow-washing’ their logos.

By creating more inclusive products, not only could we show the full extent of Mastercard’s support for the LGBTQIA+community, but we could also drive the financial services industry at large to become more inclusive.

We created True Name: the first payment product where people could feature their chosen name on their card.

We rolled out a 360 campaign to announce the True Name card to the LGBTQIA+ community and to generate interest from potential partners.

Mastercard went to banks with support from the LGBTQIA+ community. There was some interest, but no banks would commit. But we believed in the idea, so put our reputation on the line to adopt a new strategy: we launched True Name ourselves to drive demand to get banks to put it in market.

This was a bold and unprecedented challenge to the industry: we were announcing a credit card that we couldn’t make without a bank – to convince banks that it had to be made.

Mastercard launched the idea for True Name through a 360 campaign at World Pride in NYC. This included creating panels where Trans and Nonbinary advocates spoke on the impact True Name could make to people’s everyday lives, PR placements, advertisements during the Pride Parade broadcast, and social and OOH placements.

The idea for True Name made an immediate and significant impact in culture and the LGBTQIA+ community.

As a result of the response, Mastercard secured partnerships with banks around the world. True Name is now in market with BMO Harris Bank, Superbia Credit Union, Citibank, and Bunq, with more set to launch in more markets around the world.

Even more importantly, True Name set a new industry standard. Our competitors (including Visa) and their banks (including JP Morgan Chase) have subsequently changed their own practices, bringing similar products to market: changing the industry, one step and one name at a time.