Mastercard is set to pay $26 million to settle accusations that the company has for years underpaid thousands of female, Black and Hispanic employees, according to an agreement filed in court on Tuesday.
The settlement, if approved by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, will resolve claims that Mastercard underpaid roughly 7,500 employees across the country starting in 2016. The company, which did not admit to any wrongdoing, also agreed to conduct annual pay equity audits for three years and hire a psychologist to assess bias in its workplace.
Female, Black and Hispanic employees were paid less than their male and white counterparts for doing the same or similar work, according to the proposed class action complaint, which was also filed on Tuesday. Mastercard, the world’s second-largest payment processing company, on several occasions improperly assigned women and people of color to job levels below their experience, contributing to pay gaps, the complaint says.
“We think it’s a good resolution for the clients, and we think it provides a framework for other companies in the industry to improve their practices with respect to pay equity,” said Cara Greene, a partner at the law firm Outten & Golden who is representing the plaintiffs in the case.
Ms. Greene called the settlement a “fair compromise” that reflected the claims from the thousands of women and people of color who had worked at Mastercard. She declined to share specific pay discrepancy figures.
A spokesman for Mastercard, Seth Eisen, said that the company “strongly” denied the allegations in the lawsuit, and that in settling the case, Mastercard was “committing to continue to support and deliver for our employees.”
He added, “It is in the best interest of all involved to bring this matter to a close.”
Other major companies, including those in the financial services industry, have settled pay discrimination claims in recent years, in some cases paying significantly larger sums. In 2023, Goldman Sachs agreed to pay $215 million to settle a gender bias lawsuit that accused the bank of hindering women’s career advancement and paying them less than their male colleagues. In 2022, Google agreed to pay $118 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused it of systematically underpaying women.
