I spoke with Khowala about his career and how his CFO jobs have prepared him for other positions in Mastercard’s business. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity.

In your time at Mastercard, you’ve had two separate CFO roles. Tell me about those roles, where you moved in between, and why you decided to take the job leading Mastercard Move.

Khowala: I go back to the theme of wanting to challenge myself. I want to do new things, different things to grow myself. I started in the Middle East and Africa as the CFO. The region was very small for the company, but that gave me an ability to build the business for Mastercard. Finance was always the focus area, but it gave me an ability to see customers, build a strategy and drive impact to make that region meaningful. I really feel proud of the four or five years that I spent. We were able to quadruple the revenue in that region. 

After that, I moved to corporate FP&A. I had the micro view of running a region and customer insights, but then the company needed me to bring all of that to the strategic vision, bring the micro and macro together so that we can get a better impact for the customer. 

There is a lot of buzz around artificial intelligence, machine learning, how gen AI can transform the work. When I was in corporate FP&A seven, eight years ago, we implemented machine learning to do our budgeting and forecast. It was a huge success from two perspectives. It drove the thought leadership for the finance community—not just for the company, but many other companies. It’s something people believed can only be done on spreadsheets. No, machines can do it much better. It did give an efficiency gain, but I think the bigger gain was taking over the subjectivity that we inject in the process of budgeting. It required a huge culture change in the company to adopt that.

I had done micro work. I had done global thought leadership work. Okay, what next? We looked at this business unit which manages two-third of companies’ revenue, the innovation app where everything new and different that we want to do is in this space. The company needed somebody who could start thinking differently, but who could carry the ship the way it is sailing. While we are moving, how do we pivot and change? We were taking an enormous number of bets, but we were not commercializing as fast as we should have. With my background, with all the business outcomes that I was focused on driving, I took on that role. 

One proof point I feel really proud of [was] when my boss comes and tells me, ‘Pratik, I don’t want to talk to you about business, I don’t want to talk to you about finance. Can you run this business for me?’ I had several instances as CFO for consumer and commercial payment where my boss asked me to go and fix a business problem for him rather than just a finance problem. That’s the career journey I had before I found a completely new role running a business line, which I am managing as a CEO. 

What kinds of things specifically from the CFO roles have you brought with you to run Mastercard Move that have helped you be more successful? 

Most CFOs have certain skill sets, which I would say generally that functions [they] are able to develop. CFOs are very disciplined, they’re structured, and they’re execution focused. 

Those three skill sets you will generally find in most CFOs, but over time there are three other distinctive skills which I have been able to build because of the way I approach my career and driving impact. One: deeper understanding of business. I think there are times when CFOs don’t look at it; they get stuck into their numbers. Second: making decisions. Making a delayed decision is as bad as making no decision. How do you make fast and effective decisions? And third: embrace technology. [Like] how we used machine learning when we were doing my FP&A duty. 

Those three I developed as a distinctive skill as I was doing my 25 years of finance. So I brought those into the business, and then I started looking at what my customer needs. Combining the customer needs with all the skills that I have developed helped me to prioritize better [and] have a clear communication of our priority to our employees, senior management and customers to win their trust that we can execute. I think it’s a combination of what I learned versus what I'm learning, and combining those to drive impact.

What advice would you have to CFOs or aspiring CFOs about taking their career beyond the CFO position?

The CFO function is becoming more and more critical for any organization. I don’t think any organization now sees CFOs and the accounting department [as the ones] which will just churn the number in gear. They have to become strategic business partners, not in words, but in reality.

My real success was when my business lead asked me to solve a business problem and not a finance problem. I think we as CFOs should start aiming to get there. 

There are things which I have focused on, and I would advise my peers to [do the same]. Own your career. Nobody’s going to help you build your career. Be courageous, take risks. Second, be outcome driven. Don’t ever think, ‘This is my job and I have done my job.’ If one does their job but the results are not there, then your job is not help. [Your job should] drive outcomes for all stakeholders, but it also gives us a real good learning opportunity. 

Embrace technology. Don’t get stuck up into what you have been doing for the last 30 years or what other CFOs have been doing for 30 years. There are better and much more effective ways to do things. As much as people do budget every year, they do forecast every month, does that add any value? You need to move from that and do something different. So embrace technology and think outside the box. 

Fourth, and most important for me, is build trust. Build trust with each one of your stakeholders, whether it be business partners, customers [or] your employees, because building trust will enable you to lean on a team which can outlive you and carry the work that you started. 

All CFOs are many times hesitant to take a risk on their career and on the business. There is a simple philosophy: For every reward, you have to take risk. You have to manage that risk effectively to get the return that comes with your career [and] your business. Typically, CFOs get stuck up into the control mindset and they start avoiding risk. And when you avoid risk, you avoid risk on your career and the business. 

As a philosophy, I believe each one of us in the finance function should embrace everything. And that helps you to earn trust of the business. I see that, and I advise my CFO now every single day: you have to do this. He’s the most trusted partner for me for everything. I go to him first.