Interviewing for Visa / Mastercard consulting teams

Hi there,

Visa and Mastercard consulting interviews are slightly different from traditional MBB style but still very structured and practical. For Visa Consulting and Analytics in particular, you should expect a take home case study that you typically have about a week to work on. It focuses on real client problems, data analysis, clear insights, and practical recommendations rather than interview style casing. I’ve helped a couple of candidates successfully pass this stage, so the key is being very clear on structure, assumptions, and how you communicate your findings.

Mastercard’s consulting interviews are usually closer to live case discussions with a strong commercial and payments industry lens. Expect questions around growth, pricing, partnerships, and market entry, along with fit and stakeholder communication.

In preparation, focus on understanding the payments ecosystem, being comfortable with data driven storytelling, and translating analysis into clear business actions.

Happy to help you prep if useful - feel free to reach out!

Best,
Evelina

Hi there,

For Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA) and Mastercard’s consulting teams, the process is generally more commercial and data-driven than classic MBB cases, and less about long, abstract strategy frameworks. What I’ve consistently heard from candidates who went through these processes:

First, expect a strong focus on payments, revenue drivers, and economics. You should be very comfortable with concepts like transaction volumes, take rates, issuer vs acquirer economics, interchange, and how Visa or Mastercard actually make money. They don’t expect you to be an expert, but they do expect you to reason clearly from first principles.

Second, cases tend to be shorter, more practical, and more quantitative. Instead of a 45-minute deep strategy case, you’ll often see market sizing, pricing, growth, or profitability questions grounded in real client situations. Being crisp with numbers and translating insights into business implications matters a lot.

Third, data interpretation is key. You’ll likely be shown charts, tables, or simplified datasets and asked to extract insights, prioritize issues, and make recommendations. Clear structure and “so what” thinking are more important than fancy frameworks.

Finally, fit and client readiness matter. These teams work closely with banks, merchants, and fintechs, so they look for people who can communicate clearly, be pragmatic, and feel credible with clients early on.

If you prepare like a strategy case but bias your prep toward payments economics, quantitative reasoning, and concise recommendations, you’ll be in good shape.

Congrats on securing interviews with both—these teams are fantastic entry points, especially if you’re keen on deep functional expertise within payments and financial services.

The most critical thing to understand is that VCA and Mastercard Consulting are subtly different beasts than pure-play strategy firms like Bain or BCG. While they do robust client strategy work, their competitive advantage is data access and network influence. You are not just selling PowerPoint; you are selling solutions that leverage Visa/Mastercard’s massive proprietary data sets and direct connections to issuers and acquirers.

This means your prep needs to be dual-layered. Yes, master the standard case structure (profitability, market entry, M&A) as the foundational test of logic. But crucially, dedicate significant time to understanding the mechanics of the payments ecosystem: how interchange works, the roles of issuers vs. acquirers, tokenization, fraud mitigation, and how V/MA monetizes its network. You should be ready for highly contextual cases that ask you to use specific proprietary data (hypothetically) to solve a client issue, demonstrating you can bridge high-level strategy down to tangible product implementation.

In the fit interviews, prioritize examples of projects where you dealt with ambiguity or helped a client execute something using proprietary assets. They are looking for domain credibility, not just general consulting horsepower. The people you will work with often have a very deep, technical background in banking or payments, so demonstrating genuine curiosity and knowledge about the vertical will set you apart.

All the best with the process!

Yes. I've had a few candidates interviewing with them. 

The cases are typically from financial services, so I would prepare in a more targeted fashion for those. 

Do ask the recruiter, however, how the recruitment process will look specifically for you. 

If you need any help with the prep, please drop me a message and I can walk you through the prep process I went through with the other Visa/Mastercard candidates.

Best,
Cristian

Hi,

If you are an MBB consultant prepping for an exit, feel free to dm me for more details. 

I am currently helping a few candidates interview for them, and also have friends who conduct interviews at these 2 companies so I understand how it works.