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All right. Kicking off with the last of our sessions, last but not least, we have CFO of MasterCard, Ling Hai, incoming CFO, I think the first conference that you've done in your new role? Indeed. So welcome. We're very pleased to have you, hopefully the first of many, and we're looking forward to the conversation here. Thank you. Thank you for doing this with me. so look I think you know we'll have time to get into the specifics of MasterCard here in a second but maybe we can start with you I'd love to hear a little bit of color about yourself for those who haven't had the pleasure of meeting you maybe talk about your background your history of the company sure I've been with MasterCart for 17 years from the very beginning I have always known I want to be the CFO of Mastercard no that's not true I in fact I grew up in MasterCat as a general manager. So my first job, I ran Greater China as a division. Then I went to London, had a global job, went to Singapore, co-headed Asia, and then went back to London, co-headed international markets. And then last year, I headed back to Singapore. So I made two round trips between London and Singapore, running a huge cluster of MasterCard's markets and divisions I think one of the things that's really amazing is in the last 17 years I had a front-row seat to some of the most amazing developments in our industry including things like Apple pay tokenization right the sort of innovation you just wouldn't have imagined in 2000 and also the the fact that we got domestic switching in Japan license domestic license in China and And now we have, again, had a groundbreaking win in the UAE in terms of becoming the domestic switch or the technology provider for the domestic switch in the U.A.E. So those things are all amazing. So I really am glad that I can bring that experience now to the CFO job because I understand what shapes the numbers and that sort of insight, I think, is going to be very helpful to this job. So maybe we can talk about that. I mean, you know, you've been on the job for now for about a month, and it is a different job transitioning from operational to financial. You have to come to conferences like this. You have talk to me. You have talked to them. What is top of mind for you, and what is your view of the role and how you'll shape it? My view of role is I can do this in my sleep. This is a piece of cake. No, it's not true. So I'm learning. I'm still learning the CFO job. But one of the things I would say, though, my focus is squarely on driving top-line growth. MasterCard is a growth stock. I want to make sure in terms of capital allocation we continue to drive top- line growth, and that is through both organic growth but also inorganic through mergers and acquisitions. If I think about the organic growth, it is really about continue to allocate more investments in the front line. MasterCard is a b2b company we don't go to consumers directly right and so the ability to work with the banks and the issuers and acquirers that requires engagement people on the ground talking to our customers and also co-create things that really are relevant that address their pain points so that's really important and then of course if the if we see the right opportunities out there in the market and we can make acquisitions to drive growth and speed to market or acquire new capabilities we're going to do that as well so that's really important in my mind of course the second order of priorities is going to be about a strong balance sheet because without a strong balanced that we won't be able to do the M&A work we need to do positive operating leverage continue to make sure revenue growth outpaces expenses and and and the last thing is whatever excess capital we have will return to shareholders via buybacks and dividend great maybe we can switch it and talk a little bit about the macro environment and broader spin trends it's been a very dynamic marketplace you've had travel disruptions in the Middle East you've had absinthe closer gas prices can you comment on the current landscape if you see it in any call outs on recent spending trends yeah I think what's really interesting is the overall macro environment remains very supportive of both consumer spend and business spend I continue to be impressed by how resilient consumers are I mean in the US that resilience like continues to shine through people are spending their money on travel Americans are going to you know box office movies like Spider-Man and Odyssey they're spending money on experiences such as dining so entertainment in general is a huge category so that's still there the other thing that's really impressive is you know if you think about travel people still doing this and it's like across the board and it suppose it's very broad-based both in terms of affluent and also mass consumers of course there are uncertainties right I mean we still have a war in the Middle East but I think one of the things that's really important to remember is our business model is very diversified we're diversified across different markets in terms of payment flows were diversified but also in terms or revenue mix we have both payments and services so that resilience our resilience really comes from this diversification so I remain very optimistic about the growth So one of the things maybe I want to talk a little bit about is the operating metrics that we're seeing. In the first four weeks of August, broadly, all the operating matrix are in line with the first 4 weeks in July that we are seeing. So that's really strong, and that's very consistent, and it's very positive. Yeah. No, that's great. That all sounds quite healthy. Maybe we can zoom in a little on the cross-border dynamics. You've seen some discrete impacts on cross-border operating metrics this year, some puts and takes on portfolios, on travel, certain countries coming online. Can you talk about the composition of your cross-Border spin today and how you think about the growth drivers from here? Yeah, absolutely. So when I think about cross-Worder, we broadly divide it into two categories. One is cross-worder travel, and then the other category we call card-not-present excluding travel, right? so non-travel cross-border. So if I think about the travel category, you talked about the discrete impact, that is the Middle East, yeah? In April, we saw negative impact, both in terms of inbound into the region, but also outbound. But overall, year to date, the impact is much less negative than we expected, especially the recovery on the outbound piece, I think is actually good and continues throughout the month in the second quarter and also the third quarter. And the other thing that I'm seeing in travel is people continue to travel, but they're just shifting their travel routes a little bit. So, for example, your northern neighbor here, the Canadians are not coming to the U.S. as much now, but they go into Europe, right? During UEFA, the Europeans are coming tothe U. S., but then off-season the Europeans are traveling to Asia so they're avoiding the Middle East but they're coming to Asia. So even though you see some puts and takes but overall I think it's more of a shift in terms of cross-border travel. And then if you think about cross-water non-travel the categories here is I talked about this is something we call CNP Cardinal present it's things like the traditional e-commerce people buying services and goods on Amazon for example. But it's also like, it also includes emerging categories like my subscription to perplexity, people putting this on a card, on file, right? And so it's a recurring spend every month. And that's a new category. So all the AI platforms consumers adopting, that gives us additional spend. You're also seeing digital assets and crypto, for example, right, we talked about in our earnings is one of the piece that's driving cross-border for us is spend out of Venezuela. And because all of a sudden U.S. dollar is available and consumers are using their cards to purchase crypto. There's also wallet funding. You know, people transfer money into digital wallets like the Revolut wallet or Wise wallet. So that's also happening. So all in all, I think, you know, the growth remains very strong in both travel and cross-border non-travel. Yeah, great. One of the things that you touched on, several different perspectives from different regions echoing your history across multiple regions within the organization. If you can reflect on what you have seen from working in the region over so many years, how is MasterCard positioned across the world? We're positioned very well. In fact, maybe let me also add one thing. I talked about operating metrics in line, August versus July. That's the same with cross border as well, both for cross border travel, but also non-travel. Same idea. If you look at the first four weeks of August versus the first four week of July, like for like basis, remain in line very strong. So your question is about our position in the regions. I mean, I don't want to just speak about the regions that I worked in, I think across the board, globally, MasterCard has a very strong position. And let me explain to you why. First of all, in many markets, we continue to have the secular tailwind, which is cash conversion opportunities. Even in a developed market like Japan, cash as a percent of retail commerce is still close to 50%. So that gives us additional opportunity to convert cash into digital payments. So So therefore, if I think about the overarching pillar that we have in MasterCard, which is diversification, right? We do not want to hang our hat only on one branch. So diversification happens across geographies. In the regions that I worked in, you still have huge opportunities in Southeast Asia. You still have big opportunities in Asia. You still do have huge opportunity in Eastern Europe. In the entire continent of Africa, there's more digitization opportunity. So there's lots of white space markets. We can continue to dive. diversify into. So that's the first pillar of diversification. The second pillar of diversification is really around different payment flows. Historically, MasterCard serves more P2M flows. Now we're getting into B2B commercial flows, cross-border remittances, P2P flows. So that also gives us the additional tailwind. Our network is about moving money from A to B, whether that's P2B or B2M, we're able to leverage the same network to serve different use cases. And the third piece is really around services. Today, 40% of our revenue mix is in services. That gives us the diversification, but that also helps us differentiate the core payment offerings. It is how we win deals by leveraging our services capabilities and differentiate our offerings. So when I think about these three pillars, I am very optimistic. MasterCard, in this very competitive environment, we have the capabilities, the right toolkit, but also the right mindset of our people to continue to win the hearts and minds of our customers. Okay, one thing that came up on the earnings call that I thought was really interesting, warranted a little bit more discussion, was the announcement with the central bank of the UAE. And the announcement was that MasterCard will power their local payment system. So can you unpack just what that means for the non-payment cards out there? What does it mean to operate the local switch? And, you know, could you share some more details on how that actually works? Yeah. This is actually a pretty significant development for us, even though the UAE is not a huge country. But it's a very important country and market now in the Middle East. investors ask me about the sovereignty issue, right? You see this across the board everywhere in the world. And I think the UAE example is one of the playbooks now we have developed to tackle the sovereignty issues. This is when a sovereign nation state says, I need to have my own payment alternative, but I don't have the capabilities to do it. I actually need to partner with somebody. So in the UAE, MasterCard has become the technology provider for the domestic switch. There is a domestic brand called J. Wong, so we co-brand with J. Wang. There is an entity owned by the central bank called AEP, so we set up a joint venture with AEP. There's a domestic mandate that all debit transactions need to run through a domestic switch, but guess what? MasterCard is the technology is the switch underlying switch for the domestic solution so in the end we are the alternative in the context of the sovereignty agenda and in the sense we process almost a hundred percent almost a hundred of the debit transactions we will we're still implementing the ceiling in the UAE so we will be processing almost a hundred percent of the debt transactions we will be able to apply services such as cyber security so yes there's a sovereignty agenda but we are completely relevant and in playing the UAE so we actually find this playbook very very strategically important because we will be able replicate in other markets as well great and maybe just as a quick follow-up how will this show up in the business is this value-added service or payments I think it's both in fact this is like the We talk about services providing the flywheel effect, but I think in the first instance, we have to wing the payment flows, yeah? So the core business is very important. There's this mutual independency between the two. I talk about Services, and we actually publicly talk about how 60% of our services attach to the network. It's based on the payment flow that we process, right? So I think services strengthen the network and differentiates the network, but the network and the transactions we process provide the foundation for services. So these things are very much interlinked. And then the other thing is, you know, I always say, you knows, yes, we're in the business of payments, but payments are not just about moving money from A to B. Oftentimes, it's about what happens if there's a dispute? What happens if the transaction needs to get reversed? When something goes wrong, when there's fraud, right? And so our business model has this franchise model which is like the secret sauce of the business model because it establishes a whole set of rules and paradigm around building this trust or instilling this trust into the ecosystem. So we will continue to leverage that, and the services play a huge role in terms of consumer protection, cybersecurity. So, again, the two things reinforce each other. Yeah, okay. Another example of MasterCard innovation. Maybe we can talk about just the competitive intensity and deal economics in the market. There's been a lot of movement over the last couple of years, a lot focus on just competitive dynamics and payments more broadly. What is your perspective on that? Has the competitive intensity increased? Has the focus of competition changed? And how would you tie that back to deal economics or rebates and incentives when we think about incremental volume? We have always dealt with competition. And I say whenever I see competition, I get excited because I think competition indeed makes us better. it makes us more innovative because we have to differentiate so it's not a new phenomenon we have always lived with it and I think the key in here is like I said the reason for investing the front line is got to stay very close to the customers again we are a b2b model so this whole co-creation we cannot just inventing we cannot be inventing our own widgets in the ivory tower this This ability to discover problems together with our customers, co-create solutions, I think is very critical. We always want to win, for sure. But we are also very disciplined. It's not like I want to wing deals at any cost. Deals need to be profitable. So we want to wind market share in a way that's profitable. So we do have an approach where we measure our success against not just share and volume, but also profitability. And then the other thing I would say is, yes, deal economics is important, and sometimes we do have to go a little deeper in terms of price and economics to win a major deal, because otherwise you won't be able to do the services. But like I said, we do Have Services differentiation, and we use that as a lever as well. So new products, new services, use them as differentiation differentiation beyond just money or economics to win deals. And has what clients are looking for in those deals changed over the last several years? Well, I think that one thing that remains the same is customers, like Mastercard, they're looking to grow their business. They want growth. They want better service to their consumers. So that's a commonality that hasn't changed. What probably has changed is on specific products or solutions. Right. So used to be a debit and credit will carry the day. And now people are talking about stable coins, Gentic, what that means for them. So there are things that have not changed, but there are also innovations and solutions that are different, and that's expected of MasterCard, and we have to continue to step up and come to the table with the right play. Great. So you've referenced value-added services several times in that answer. Maybe we can talk about the growth algorithm in this business. It's continued to be a very strong driver. It's a very large percentage of revenue now. How do you think about the growth of that bucket over time, and what are the certain pieces of that portfolio that are really carrying a lot of that strength? Yeah. Well, services constitute almost 40% of our net revenue now. When I joined MasterCard 17 years ago, it was a small percentage. So, yes, it has grown. But it's not just the revenue growth. It's also a differentiation. I mean, in services, I talked about the 60% that attach to the network. But we also have another 40% that's data and insights and consulting advisory services, right, and merchant loyalty, for example. But those things are also really important because, for ejemplo, advisory and consulting, that's what enables our team to be, like, living and breathing with the customers every day and discover their problems before an RFP even comes out. So it's a differentiation even in our deal approach as well. So very important for our growth algorithm. I would also say today with AI, that will also give MasterCard continued tailwind in terms of driving more growth. Now, here I'm talking about sustainable growth, right, long-term sustainable growth and optimize the mix as well. But why do I talk about AI as a way to create that sustainable momentum? It is because you're going to see more fraud. You're going to see more scam. Bad actors will leverage AI. There will be more sophistication in fraud and the cybersecurity. So our customers expect MasterCard to continue to stay ahead and come up with new cybersecurity solutions. And by the way, when I say cybersecurity, it's cyber, but it's also identity. It is also fraud prevention. It's also scam prevention. It's the end-to-end security solutions that I'm thinking when I see cyber. So we need to continue to innovate, and that's the space that's going to give us continued momentum. And we will do this also through both organic growth but also acquisition as well. And you've made several acquisitions in cyber. Maybe we can double-click on that a little bit because that's been a big topic of conversation over the past couple of days. What are you seeing in terms of the demand environment for cyber? And if you could comment just on the specific cyber solutions that MasterCard has, are you seeing broad-based demand across the portfolio? Is it specific products that are resonating the most right now? Yeah, very much so. Strong demand, broad- based demand, and it's also end-to-end, and MasterCARD has been in this business for a long time. So, therefore, again, like I said, cyber is identity, cyber ist fraud, cyber also cybersecurity capabilities. The best example I can give you is the Recorded Future, which is, you know, Recorded Futures is in the business of providing customers with insights into the dark web, for example, compromise credentials, phone numbers, addresses, right? So we can then help customers proactively anticipate, you Know, threats, trends, and fraud intelligence. So with the recorded future acquisition, we actually have developed a new product called Threat Intelligence, and it's attached to the network. It's distributed through the network, and its priced through the net. And that's a great example of saying we may have purchased the capability that's more a one-to-one sales model, which doesn't lend itself to scaling very quickly. But we're able to leverage the capabilities and create a new product that is distributed through the network, that is priced through the network, and that creates a much better scale more quickly. So that's an example of what we are doing with cyber. So let's pivot and talk a little bit about the crypto and stablecoin ecosystem. MasterCard recently closed in the BVNK acquisition, which brings a lot of new stablecoin capabilities to the company. Now that that acquisition is closed, can you remind us of the opportunity that you see in the digital asset space and how you're going after it? Yeah. Well, first of all, I just want to let you know that we closed the BVNK on August the 3rd. It's the same date when I became CFO of Mastercard. So this date will be in my memory forever. Not that I have anything to do with BV&K, but it's a very important asset. People ask me what are the use cases for stablecoin. First of all, I don't think it's really a P2M use case. In P2m it's probably a solution looking for a problem, but stablecoins I think do address certain relevant use cases such as B2B payments, cross-border remittances, P2P, me-to-me, right? And also I can in this envisage if let's say someday smart contracts take off you know like real estate transactions very clunky in most countries I let a lot of frictions you need a lot a middleman just because the buyers and sellers don't know each other there's a there's trust issue but if contracts truly become smart contracts and and they can be executed on the blockchain having a programmable money that can be executed condition upon the execution of the contract I do see value in that we do hear customers ie the banks talk about tokenized deposits or tokenized assets in general then I think stable coin will become a good media of exchange in this in this world so for that reason MasterCard is at the table we're embracing stable coin it may just be a percent of the payment flows but we want to be there so what is BB and K then it creates that interoperability play it is a orchestration layer in the first instance if it gives us the ability to provide a white label wallet we don't we don't go to consumers directly again this is through our customers but our wallet that helps store and convert and receive and send stable coin assets so So we now truly have an interoperability play in the payment flows, whether this is among different stablecoins, among different blockchains, or whether this interoperabilty between digital assets, stablecoins or fiat currencies. And I think that's a very significant capability we have developed. You also probably heard we made an announcement of Open Standard, right? This is, again, a joint venture among industry players, and our BVNK capability will be very, very relevant in this. Yeah. So you just talked about one of those recent acquisitions. I'd like to get your take maybe on M&A more broadly. Can you share your views on M & A and give us a sense if MasterCard will continue to be acquisitive as you have been in the past? Yeah. I mean, if I think about my role, again my role as CFO, part of the capital allocation allocation, we'll be making acquisitions and strategic investments. So I talked about the three pillars of our diversification, right? So we'll continue to make acquisitions when the opportunities serve us right in terms of growing the core. So acquisitions are not just in services, which is the third pillar I talked About. It's not just in new flows, which is the second pillar. But it's also in the first pillar, which is our core payment business because in some of the nascent markets or emerging markets that may be the right relevant play why because it shortens our speed to market so time to market can be faster we will make acquisitions when it's about capabilities like BVNK is a great example of buying a capabilities could also be about getting the right talent into into the company so for the right opportunities will continue to make acquisitions to drive the growth algorithm great all right as you look at MasterCard's business today can you comment just how you think about the durable the durability of growth and the composition of revenues how do you expect growth will growth will trend from here and then how do think the mix of revenues will evolve yeah well I have a lot of confidence in the durability of our revenue growth precisely because of the the things I just talked about it's the diversified nature of the business model right what makes the growth durable is because we're diversified you know sometimes in certain years you may have puts and takes in terms of cross-border flows or you may put and takes between core revenue and and the services but on average will continue to deliver consistent growth so so that's that's really important but I think again our services capabilities create that durability as well for the core and the core business creates the durability for services those two things self reinforce each other and that's also very important but more importantly I think again I talked about Apple pay our ability to to really spot the right trend and capitalize on them and create the right innovation to to embrace those opportunities remains very critical so So the ability to work with Apple on Apple Pay, right? And now it is about working with all the AI platforms to think through what a gentic commerce could mean, right. I think in the future, not everything is going to be a gentick. Just like today, after 30 years of growth and development, e-commerce, and I'm talking about market level data. This is now MasterCard data. at a market level globally after 30 years ecommerce is not even 50% of overall retail commerce it's not even 30% it's 20% right so if we play this out another 10 years 20 years I still think you're gonna have a mix of different commerce you have physical in-person commerce you're going to have online commerce you'll have agentic commerce I think the the secret ingredient of the network credential is we'll be able to serve, MasterCard credential will be able to serve in all these different verticals, whether it's in-person, whether It's online, whether it's a GenTech. And the ability to do that right, to play in all verticals so we're truly omni-channel is also another reason that will give us the durability of growth. Great. We got a couple minutes left here when I squeeze a few more in one is on pricing I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on how MasterCard approaches pricing and how you think about the runway going forward yeah I think I think about pricing as pricing for value like tokenization is a great example right we we launched tokenization a while back we continue to drive more penetration in different markets. But then, you know, in this emerging agentic world, I think tokenization becomes so important in terms of protecting consumers and ensuring the integrity of the payment network. So, and now we can actually price for the value that we deliver to the ecosystem. And there are many, many other examples like that. Cybersecurity is also such an example. Someday we will deliver even more merchant specific services. I talked about loyalty and we'll price for those as well. So I think the ability to deliver value in the first instance is what gives us the runway to price, to drive more economics from the network. Makes sense. All right. One more here. And if I can take advantage of the experience you have in some of your prior roles, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you for an update on the opportunity in China and the state of MasterCard's various initiatives there. Yeah. Look, I've been working on China, I mean, for the entire 17 years. This has been part of my mission to get a license, domestic license. And for those of you who are familiar with China, it's not easy. It's not an easy market. And it took us a long time. We got there. And we have our domestic license granted to us two, three years ago. And in terms of revenue numbers, it's still probably going to be a medium-term opportunity. But if I look at what we're doing in China, it gives me tremendous optimism. We're working really hard with all the Chinese banks across the board on issuance, driving different products. And it's not just credit products, but also debit, right? People think China is very saturated in terms of debit because the country has billions of debit cards already. But, well, guess what? because we are a global player, we have global acceptance, we have better global acceptance than the domestic players, we're able to even issue additional now new programs in the debit space as well. So that's very exciting. We drive acceptance, right? We're starting from almost ground zero in terms of acceptance. What gives me a lot of confidence is also if you now go to Shanghai or Beijing or Guangzhou or Shenzhen, you can actually use your card, your international card, and tap and go into a subway station, right? You do not need to have Alipay or WeChat pay a card and you don't need to buy a transit card either. Open loop, tap and go in the transit systems in China now is a reality in these four cities and we also launched in Chengdu as well. So that is actually really important and given that we now have a domestic license and we're domestically relevant, the strength now we have is not just on the issuing side and the acceptance side, but it's also our ability to work with all the digital players in China, including Alipay, WeChat Pay, including Meituan and JD.com, because now we are domestically relevant. You may say, hey, look, in China everybody uses AlipAY. Why would they use a card? They do. If you're buying a robot on JD.COM, The ticket size oftentimes is much greater than what you would have in a digital wallet. So people will use credit cards. So that's something we're working on. And then services is another realm of opportunities for us that I'm extremely optimistic about. But more fundamentally, in our business, I always have this thing, without home, there's no away. so in order to get cross-border transactions you must first be relevant in the domestic space so our domestic relevance is fueling the growth in outbound travel for the Chinese consumers and we're seeing that very clearly in our data and also without without home you're not going to have inbound acceptance either because if I have limited card acceptance will when you go to Shanghai you won't be able to use your US issued card now with the development of our domestic acceptance, foreign visitors can use their MasterCard in China as well. So both from the outbound and inbound perspective, it is also helping us drive growth. Right. That's a great update. Maybe we should leave it there. But thank you so much for being here. Really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.