MasterCard International has assigned a senior executive to focus on its rejuvenated relationship with Europay International.
Former American Express marketing veteran Jean F. Rozwadowski is responsible for keeping MasterCard and Europay on the same page.
He joined MasterCard last March as senior vice president for Europe, Middle East/Africa, and Canada, and will continue to report to Robert W. Selander, the MasterCard president for those regions.
Since August Mr. Rozwadowski, 50, has been stationed at Europay's Waterloo, Belgium, headquarters.
He will be senior vice president and general manager, Europe, responsible for operations, marketing, and branding initiatives with the Europay alliance.
He takes the newly created post seven months after MasterCard revised and extended the terms of the alliance with its European affiliate. The changes included an agreement to combine the two credit card logos- MasterCard and Eurocard-at European points of sale.
"Europe is a very critical region of the world for MasterCard," Mr. Rozwadowski said. "There's a lot of very important liaison work to be done between Europay and MasterCard in terms of building the MasterCard brand in Europe."
The Europay relationship accounts for most of MasterCard acceptance in Europe, said Stephen Drees, a former MasterCard executive who is now principal of Westborough, Mass.-based Strategic Marketing Services. Europe contributes about 25% of MasterCard's annual gross dollar volume-a figure that exceeded $550 billion in 1996.
MasterCard acknowledged that its 10-year-old relationship with Europay will be crucial to its global growth and brand strength.
Before joining MasterCard, Mr. Rozwadowski spent 20 years at American Express, most recently in charge of strategic partnerships in developing markets.
Mr. Drees said MasterCard was hardly ignoring the Europay relationship before Mr. Rozwadowski's appointment: "This is just in recognition of how that relationship has expanded and the importance of it to MasterCard."
