Typically, Mastercard advertises to a very broad audience: the majority of adults have a Mastercard in their wallet. But for Pride, our audience was much more targeted: the LGBTQIA+ community, which represents just 5.6% of the US population.

To connect with this community, we had to be extremely contextual and relevant. And, we had to be genuine: the community is more skeptical than ever of big brand presence and “rainbow washing”. To meet these goals, we solved for a unique pain point in the community, tapped relevant influencers, and activated at the heart of the community.

Mastercard has been supporting the LGBTQIA+ community for more than 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.

So we asked ourselves, could Mastercard do something to actually remedy this problem? And maybe even change industry practices.

Mastercard doesn’t issue credit cards. Banks do. Mastercard makes cards work, but banks own the cards themselves, the cardholder relationships, and the credit.

We realized that 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.

We took the product Mastercard is best known for -credit cards- and made them more inclusive by creating True Name: the first payment product where people could feature their chosen name on their card. The aim was to set a new industry standard and drive progress.

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

For Trans and Nonbinary people, using the right name is not just a matter of expression, it’s also one of acceptance, and even physical safety. In fact, 32% of Transgender people who’ve shown an ID 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.

In addition, what most people don’t realize is that Mastercard doesn’t issue credit cards. Banks do. Mastercard makes cards work, but banks own the cards themselves, the cardholder relationships, and the credit.

So, when we realized that a fundamental element of every card is broken for millions, we couldn’t just fix it ourselves: we had to put Mastercard’s industry relationships on the line to convince the banks that actually issue cards to change them.

Mastercard went to banks with support from the LGBTQIA+ community, and received encouraging feedback, although no commitments upfront. But we believed in the idea, so put our money where our mouth is – and announced True Name anyway.

This was a bold and unprecedented challenge to the market: we were announcing a credit card that we couldn’t make without a bank – to convince banks that it had to be made. We needed LGBTQIA+-identifying people to ask their bank for the card.

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.

Seeing the demand from LGBTQIA+-identifying people, banks around the world signed up to bring True Name to market. 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.