hi everyone I'm Nicola tangin the CEO of the Norwegian so wealth fan and today

I'm thrilled to be joined by Michael mibach the CEO of MasterCard now

MasterCard is one of the largest technology companies in the global payment space

and last year I think you processed more than 140 billion transactions totaling more than $9 trillion in famous volume wow we own

1.3% of the company totaling more than $6 billion so it's a pleasure to have

you here and I believe this is your first ever podcast it is is the first

ever broadcast and it was 150 billion transactions wow so even more so Michael

how do you see the whole payment space developing over the next

decade right so the powerful trends at work in payment um the first one to talk

about is now know as our lives are digitizing is payments are becoming more digital

there's still a lot of payments that happen in in cash um you look at

developing economies take Africa Asia uh and so forth and you won't believe it

there's also a lot of checks around when I moved to the United States you find a

lot of checks that's still also part of the reality um then there's different

kinds of spaces as in personal payments and business payments and personal payments you know payments on the phone Biometrics those things are becoming

very very common um if you go into a store you just tap your card for example you tap your phone that's also pretty

common that is not the reality in commercial payments

in commercial payments things are a lot more clunky and it's not as digitized and it's intuitive

so with this is a landscape progressing from different starting points digitization friction lists all that progresses quite dramatically

technology is there today to do that so that in 10 years out from now uh biometric authentication no more passwords

you basically recognize like your phone recognizes you today when you open it and the payment goes through so now um

you know before I came here I had a slice of pizza down at the right Roma Pizza pretty good yeah New York Pizza yeah

um now 10 years time how will I pay for

that um most likely you will you have possibly a personal device but it's not

a payment device it would just be your phone or you don't even have um a device you basically just look into some sort of authentication camera or something that uh the pizza dealer has where it says okay it's Nicolai and it just go through

you pay authenticating with your palm with your face with your eye that is where I think things are going

the security is still there though in background uh where it takes data that you have permissioned as a consumer uh to your bank for example and say I want

for security reasons I allow you to use it and your facial data is then in the transaction but it's all tokenized so it's only used for this one transaction at this one point so the personal data doesn't fly around uh in the internet or in government databases so so forth

and what's the role of MasterCard in this world without cards

right so what we do is we enable the trend transactions between different parties

for example you have a credit card today credit card is issued by your bank um

now the bank and you you travel to New York and you buy a slice of pizza with your Norwegian um uh credit card who makes that all the

complexity in the middle work that is us

we connect the bank to another bank here in the United States to the merchant and circle closes

it's pretty complex process which we make very simple and it happens in the background

there's only one of the many roles that we have we do many other things

we keep the transaction safe we enable a transaction let's say you have an airline card and you have addon miles that you might get um for that we facilitate those kind of services that come uh come on top of that that's on the personal payment side

take a small business a small business needs working capital they want to get paid faster so there's a set of Payment Solutions card-based Payment Solutions

they get the small business their payment much faster than they otherwise would mhm

what are digital currencies going to mean for you digital currencies

you know the the power of digital currencies lies in um the underlying

technology if you think blockchain for example so if it's a blockchainbased

digital currency um there is in something called programmability

so if I pay you today but we park the payment here here in the middle and it's programmable and says if these five conditions are fulfilled only then will the payment go to um to Nikolai

that is the kind of technology that blockchain is so I think it's an enabler to make payments

smarter uh to facilitate easier processes that don't have to happen in the back back offices of a company to check has this all been fulfilled you can all program it and make it part of the payment

now there's other ideas around digital currencies take the digital Euro for example so here's uh uh the European Central Bank that is um advocating to have a digital Euro

it's basically central bank money in the hands of European Union citizens and euroland

um different story that's an alternative pay way to pay you could pay with your Mastercard or you could pay with your digital Euro

we generally like competition that's good we we have a certain product this is another product

um it's not out there today you know it's targeted to potentially pilot in 2026

so it's an element of competition is element of betterment that can come out of this technology

we're quite heavily investing in it and crypto um crypto you know today um

do you personally own cryptocurrencies I don't no

my my son has invested um I think $100 into blockchain he's very happy

today right he just called me the other day and but where does it meet Mastercard um

it meets MasterCard as um it's like any other good or service um so what I mean with that is today you

can use your MasterCard to buy anything that is legal so that's what we facilitate over our Network

now if you wanted to buy cryptocurrency that's just another good um so we enable the onramp and the off rate uh offramp into a cryptocurrency

so if I want to buy half a blockchain and you can do that with your Master Card uh we obviously vet those cryptocurrencies

compliance standards and things like that but that's what we facilitate but it's like buying anything else with your master card as long as it's legal

okay what part of the whole big Tech fintech mhm uh Innovation are you most worried about what is it that what is the biggest threat to your business

so the space of

fintech so let's just talk about uh you know the landscape who's there there's big Tech so take Apple for example that's a you know fintech in in a way um take

the startup space somebody who comes up with a particular Tool uh that is part of the broader Financial ecosystem and somewhere in between you have the whole category of Neo Banks pure you know digital only banks that have just been born um as a digital only bank that are competing with existing Banks so that's that's the broad range

where we come across them is really mostly as a growth driver for the payment ecosystem because fex the

startups the Neo Banks as well as big Tech are enabling um digitized transactions in part of the world that were not digitized before and we you know it's kind of like a 1 plus one is three situation

so I give you a very specific example um with apple um when the Apple card launched and when Apple pay launched the idea of tokenization was born and we work together with apple to tokenize card data uh to ensure that payments are more safe and more secure um that is now prevalent around the world like we do 1 billion transactions a month uh in tokenized transactions a month so it's come from an idea to something very significant that drives more simple and more secure payments there for digitization advances

that's something that that a company like that can do on the startup side what we're doing is we have uh one of the largest fintech incubators that are there so fintech come to us we help them run their business because they have an idea as an entrepreneur but they don't really want to think about payments or running a business they want to you know turn their idea into reality um so we we invite them into our start path incubator and we work with them

now the question about competition and threat and apple in theory could decide uh because they're so large to do payments themselves without us why absolutely a possib

ability um the smaller ones they're rather I think they're introducing new capability entrepreneurial thinking creativity um into the ecosystem that's fundamentally not a competitive threat at least an early stage but if they have a dramatically new technology and idea that we miss and that could be a problem but that's medium to long term but we engag them for exactly that reason so we understand where's smart money going where's new technology going and so forth

the larger ones that have a large ecosystem taken taking Amazon taking Apple and so for us the main thinking that we have learned and appreciated working with them is move fast they want to move very fast um as a Global Network as we are we've traditionally not moved so fast because whatever we do has to work for everybody in our Network that is 27,000 banks around the world in 220 countries in territories it has to work for apple as well as the Commercial Bank XY Z in an Asian country very different approaches very different speed and so forth

they want to move fast so we started to learn how we can get the whole value chain and Master Card to move equally fast over time we're not quite there yet but a lot of progress

if we hold them back then the likelihood increases that they're looking for Alternatives MH

but why don't they start on their so far um if you look in they've been a fantastic partner and we have done um Apple Bay together we have done tap on phone together uh we've done a whole range of uh things together that are in the existing ecosystem and not in their own closed loop environment

and one of the main things It's always important to understand what is your partner your strategic partner actually trying to do what they're trying what we see they're trying to do is this is a fantastic user experience and have the user use that as long as our Solutions facilitate that within the phone within the iPhone for example now that works

take Amazon you have you know oneclick experience um in the marketplace for the longest time if payments start to add five clicks because they're just full of friction that's a problem

we've invested as a company in frictionless security that happens in the background and it is not onetime passwords and so forth

we've just announced that by 2030 um we will um have no more onetime passwords no more passwords it's all going to be authentic biomatic authenticated payments are you with your face by 2030

and we're pushing the industry because we have a broader Network we can take Everybody by the hand and say we give you DEC some you know six years to figure it out to get there to advance to the next stage that we don't have to worry about these

things large players like that if the industry doesn't move and it's a bad user experience I think they might have enough motivation to do their own thing but that's exactly what we learned it's why we love those Partnerships

Okay so you don't think it's a threat in the short term no what do you make of the buy now pay later companies

I see clar eyes is Now list nework yeah IPO plans uh for the US have been registered and so forth

you know buy now pay later is um is an interesting phenomenon for many reasons uh positive um there might be people that might never use a card in their life it's just not how they grew up you know young people um and uh this

buy now payat idea you take a loan for for one particular use uh that's good could be interesting from a uh from a borrowing perspectiv because you actually need the credit so for all sorts of reasons it's relevant um

we looked at this when this first came up about two two three years ago this is when the TR Trend really kicked in with Clara with the firm with afterpay and uh we looked at these business models and we talk started to talk to our customers uh for example the banks and the banks are saying you know this is an interesting way to uh if we were to um build out our loan portfolio through um transaction tied lending then our cost of acquisition is much lower because we don't have to find all these customer through a branch or another way to take a personal loan from us it actually happens through the transaction so makes sense from A bank's perspective so there was interest and we said well great um how does Clara how do a firm uh grow their business they go to large merchants and they offer this capability it's a very good user experience meanwhile it wasn't initially but it's meanwhile and we said what can we solve that isn't solved in this and what we can solve is scaling this up

if you deliver this capability through the MasterCard Network to any Merchant around the world and you have a bank any Bank on the other end of the transaction that really drives scalability is exactly what we've done so we took this to uh MasterCard installments to Market I think last year and said wherever Master Card is available if you want uh pay byy now pay later you can take it and uh ever since the question that we got from investors was you know isn't this the end of MasterCard we said well we always consider that um but here's here's an answer and that is we just make it available through the network because the network can deliver any functionality and that's what we put in so it lives alongside the claras of this world in the payment space

where is Europe compared to the US so uh um few things to say when I look preco pre pandemic the digitization rate of particularly Continental Europe was behind the United States UK was a bit different at that time it was still part of uh the EU we uh saw fintech Innovation I think uh across the pond and in in similar ways um but overall uh use of cash was higher uh use of cash in the United States use of cash is still higher in the United States than in Europe uh but Europe has dramatically caught up so if you look today uh take my home country in Germany there is a lot more digitization that was there three three four years ago so catching up so that's one distinction

the other distinction is the versatility the range of choices and payments in Europe is is higher uh than it is here in the United States um you have options go go to Denmark you can pay pay with Mobile Pay Anywhere uh QR code and you pay my daughter lives in Copenhagen so uh whenever I go there I have a problem because as a visitor it actually doesn't work for a tourist City like Copenhagen I think there's an issue that it somehow should be addressed so I think we should lean in on that

there is um take uh go to Poland take Blick or bizom in Spain is the equivalent of mobile pay the mobile B based uh payment Solutions um you have various local um equivalents of MasterCard gyro and and so forth different card propositions that exist but they generally only work in the respective country despite the fact it's the EU but then it works in the Netherlands only or Works in Spain only um you have

um obviously you have MasterCard and uh you know Visa available in American Express so greater versatility I was recently um in Brussels talking to the respective commissioner and uh the question that set of the meeting was exactly your question how do you compare uh Europe to the rest of the world um and I said well there is the most choice to the European consumer available

for us it means a number of things it means that in Europe every capability that we have as a company and where we develop we need to um keep Europe in mind because there's more choice so we want to make sure that our solution is as differentiated as possible and really gives the consumer in that array of choice the best reason to use our payment uh Solution that's the consumer as well as the customer which is often time the bank so more diversity um uh in Choice um but more opportunity continue to digitize I think is probably the the net answer of uh to your question

rest of the world so Asia um Africa China what are the main TR you know let's if we take that landscape uh it's uh it's interesting uh it really comes down to the question of how does a market grow up in payments

if you take China so in China what you see is um so like in Europe um if you're in Oslo you probably tap a card or use a phone uh what you do in China is you scan a QR code entirely different um this is has really not scaled anywhere else in the world like that

we chat alipay you see alipe maybe in Europe at uh some airports uh where there's a lot of Chinese uh consumers traveling through um why is

that because it's was it was and continues to be a protected environment so it grows just grows up differently it's like the biosphere of Australia looks entirely different like you know the rest of Asia so it's the same it's the same for payment if if you want to compare it like that

um in Africa yet again a different starting point it's also where in time are you um you have a highly digitized Market in in in China in Africa it's not highly digitized yet it's mainly because of infrastructure reasons and you know economic reasons but now it's starting to accelerate quite significantly and it takes yet again a different route it doesn't take the route uh of Legacy technology sleep frogging and is going straight to mobile based uh financial services and this isn't the same mobile based Financial Services I touched on earlier like just a mobile based payment is everything is on the phone and everything is on a phone like this but also a really basic feature phone um so mobile based Financial servic is the path that Africa takes um and that includes payments

and what do we know about that not much I worked in Africa for for 10 years and um I learned you got to have the locally relevant solution so what we decided to do is we obviously offer our standard solution

U but we in invested in Partnerships so we're partnering with the large Telos we just announced uh was uh earlier this year a $200 million investment MTN which is the largest telecommunications mobile provider in Africa uh to deliver to spin off um a mobile based Financial Services business to drive solutions to consumers in all parts of the continents saving paying uh being paid as a small business transferring money in out getting remittances from your relatives in Europe Etc the whole range so those are some some examples on how the world looks very different

so when you look at um your strategy going forward how important are these Acquisitions and what are the type of things you want to buy

so we um you know we're very clear when it comes to Acquisitions what we want to do so it always starts with the strategy obvious thing to say but it does start with the strategy okay what what do we want to do we want to do a CLE things we want to have the full range of Payment Solutions and we want to have a range of services that differentiate our Payment Solutions either make them safer or smarter that's broadly speaking our strategy um so we look to um buy assets that we're not fast enough or good enough in building ourselves either in the payment solution side or on the payment related services and where we then look is to say okay I can't build it fast enough then I'm going to start to look outside and the very specific areas that we have just highlighted yesterday at our investor day uh that we had here in New York we said we're looking in cyber security we're going to look forward and say where's the next threats where are the next threats coming from and do we have the right kind of assets can we build them ourselves in a time of a very fast moving cycle where the frosters coming up with new taals they're using AI they're using generative AI so we can't be building something that takes a year to build there's a company out there that already has that

we have just announced the plan the plan not yet approved acquisition of the world's number one threat intelligence company recorded future that was a good example everybody needs threat intelligence is where is my next cyber security threat coming from and we want to buy them

where else are we looking we're looking in the the space of commercial payments the outside of our conversation I said commercial these payments are clunky they're not yet as digitized so we're looking for assets and players that make this space a lot easier

you you touched on some of these kind of uh activities which are outs outside the core payments then you do quite a lot of things outside core payments right

yes um in your mind one of the most important things that you offer clients right so um just put it in the context of the numbers when you say quite a lot of things what this means is for us today U core payments is about 60% of our Revenue yeah and 40% of our revenue is related to payments related services and they're really in two categories make the payment safer cyber security related ated trans uh services for example

what is that it is at the moment of the transaction ensuring that this transaction is the one that should go through and it's not fraudulent so you fraud score it say is there a digital identity that it's it's from Nikolai or that is going to Michael is it used on a device that you have you been used before is the geolocation data telling you whether you actually can be in this place right now and all of that fraud scoring one example just a bit more that so fraud uh nearly $500 billion a year in right Global losses MH

how are you helping to reduce that so this is this is a particularly important part uh of uh of our business um we have invested 8 billion dollar in the last five years into cyber security capability um and fraud is the core part of that

if we look at what fraud does uh to Consumers um in a in a rapidly digitizing World once you frauded you lose trust in digital Solutions you won't really participate in the same way if you're small businesses can be existential to you so there's obvious you know there a whole range of reason why this is

devastating um it's rising um now we have a really preferred position because every value exchange that takes place in a digital fashion we have an opportunity to put on a stop to what the frauders are doing building the tools said during the transaction before digital identity Solutions is the person that's even attempting the transaction can we know it is with 99% shity it is you or me

are the frost just moving faster than you um we invest so much money $8 billion to stay that one step ahead and so far so good

and AI will change this in what way um AI is enabling um frosters to um you pull in additional data to find out where is the most vulnerable Target that I can find that is one thing that a AI or generative AI can do four of fraud to say all right I pull in all the data suck it up and say all right here's a set of transactions that are easier to go to than others

we can do the exact same thing now it's important to know that um for our business we've been investing in in AI for the last decade uh we have been investing in generative AI for the last three years or so um what we do for example is um uh today with the help of generative AI we're not only fraud scoring an existing transaction we're able to predict in the same fashion that I just described what a fraud St might do we predict what is the next likely fraudulent transaction that's coming because you start to see there is out in the in the data Lake that's out there you can start to see there's indications discard might be bef Fred because it's been been using in vulnerable places um etc etc many indicators as such so um everybody is arming up and we will arm up faster and because we have this network position with our customers we have a lot of uh Partners in the payment space But even now beyond the payment space who lean on us and say as a network you have more data than anybody you need to help us this includes governments

when you look at when you look at all your data and data set I mean nobody's got more than you anyway any anything fun you can read out of these data sets what are some of the kind of strange I tell I'll tell you fun it's just stick with uh with artificial intelligence um the um so somewhere I give you two example um the first is somewhere between fun and uh and less annoyance um is you book a trip you to go away for the weekend um and what do you do today at least that's what I do today so talk to my wife we decide we want to go away for the weekend you look on Google about the destination you find about the restaurants you try to figure out what is the trans what's the transfer time from the airport which airline Etc and your Sunday is gone but then you have a pretty decent trip uh but the Sunday is gone today you can do this in uh you know minutes provision data where I would make available as a consumer access to my loyalty accounts um so it's clear which miles can be Ed to book the trip um there's is obviously public data what restaurant is good open data open table at credentials for Access for reserving at the restaurant Etc all of this data is there the manual thing that I do it can all be automated so we put out shopping assistance now where we pull of this together and say the data is there we are we're playing in payments we're playing in loyalty and so forth so we have actually a preferred uh position to make this a lot easier the trip will be fun but it's less annoyance in preparing it

what is even more fun is shopping assistance so let's say uh you have been invited to a wedding a wedding is in Bali and uh the organizers your friends are saying the theme is white so you need a white suit for a wedding in barley um needs to be linen because it's super hot there and so forth how do you even buy that shopping assistance I need a a linen suit for a beach wedding in Bali uh natural language engagement and then you do this uh behind the scenes the product choices come up

was it AI who bought who bought your current suits here um no actually no that was just me uh going to a actual physical shop I like I like Mich you so Michael you are so

yesterday um well uh you know in In Pockets I try to be but I I the last thing I want to say on this this is actually I'm not making this out it's live it's live Michael Cores uh we just put it out in uh uh into the market um as as a first test and now believe the world the future of a world of a lot of assistance that consumers can easily use is going to be powerful

if we um change t a bit here um how do you define good leadership the first thing that comes to mind is you got to you have to have a vision where you want to go set a Clear Vision you set the vision yourself what you do with your team or how do you get to the vision um yeah with the team of course um but you know as a leader I think having a fundamental idea what you want to do and then start to iterate around that with kind of the best and brightest Minds around it including people who actually challenge you uh challenge the vision um I think is important so Clear Vision is the first one I think um

the back to this question about how you said it which which is a great question is as a leader to ensure in a fast changing world with a lot of pressure points you know technology uh is changing at a rapid space we we've seen more change than ever before to have the right kind of team around the table that Challen permanently challenges in h Hon's division really

important when um I believe you talked to a um banga before um when we did our leadership transition here at MasterCard we announced the leadership change in FY just for the for the listeners a banga was your predecessor yes who's now heading up the World Bank he's now heading the World Bank

we announced the leadership transition on the 25th of February 2020 this was two weeks before the United States States went into Co lockdown as a result of which um a month later our Revenue fell off a cliff because nobody went to a store any longer to pay MH

now back to the vision the vision of the vision and the business model was clear but it was significantly impaired for a period of time and we needed a team around the TA table that was empowered was willing to speak up but was all starting with everybody including me accepting we don't have the answers there is no playbook for a pandemic and we can't really reach in the shelf and say okay this is how we do this so creating a an atmosphere of psychological safety and ability for everybody to speak up even if you don't have the answer in today's business world that know might be common but I I felt this was important to really put that down um and with the employees to step forward um with humbleness and say to our employees we don't know but we'll figure it out together

do you have some leadership principles that you follow as a as a company um we felt we need to double down on exactly that um so what we uh did is a couple years ago we said here's the kind of behaviors that we want to see at Master move fast grow together create value very simple English that's what we said uh is that a leadership principle I'm not sure but it's the kind of behaviors that we want to see and we want to reward at MasterCard um I think broader leadership principles as you talk about it decency doing the right thing um that's something that's pretty deeply um even you know from the days that AJ was the CEO here deeply ingrained in kind of the the veins of the company

um I think that's been a pretty guiding principle for us so anything from your from your private life or circumstances which you take with you into your leadership

right um yes um I was 13 so this takes you long back when uh uh my parents said to me um asked me if I would like to be an exchange student um my father used to be one of the first exchange students from Germany to the United States back in the early 60s and um he loved it and they just asked if I wanted to do it and at the age of 14 uh 15 actually I I went to the United States to do my senior high school year

why is this forming irrelevant because of the following reasons the family uh that uh had made the decision to take an exchange student living in Michigan middle of the country and uh was um you know lovely amazing courageous decision really didn't travel anywhere before had some relatives in Florida otherwise really no passport not leaving uh not leaving the country um and suddenly there's this Foreigner at the table and what turned out what I didn't know is they were also really struggling to make ends meet financially so growing up in middle class in Europe where everything just works and we never really had to worry about it to a scenario where all everything I took for granted wasn't there any longer to be taken for granted dramatic change uh in perception and just relooking at uh at life and just not taking things for granted uh I think that's that's the conclusion the fact that we sit here today if I hadn't actually gone out I might be just working in Germany today and do something entirely different than what I do today I'm not judging it one is better or the other so that that's one experience

the other experience is um I worked close to uh 10 years in Middle East and Africa and it's the same thing the same thing came I had a concept of working in Investment Banking and corporate banking in Europe um and I came to Africa and none of what I knew made sense or worked or was a rule because there was no infrastructure all the rules were off it was just a different approach

do you have a German leadership style you think is such a thing as a German leadership style I uh don't think so uh no you don't think you have it or you don't think there is I don't think there is I'm not sure what that would I'd be curious what you think about that

I think it's pretty systematic it's very systematic it's very orong it's quite there's more heroy in Germany than in many other countries I think it might be uh it might be very cliche or one can never generalizes um but I'm certainly not uh a great friend of hierarchy um because in the end you know when I look for input clich is unknown there for a reason uh that's true that's true but you know overall I I don't think that's actually the reality maybe I I know a subset of people um personally I think it's really important um when when I look for input uh when I look for input what you know where we might go uh obviously I talk to my team and I talk to our experts and all of that uh but I hang out with some of our youngsters that we have just uh hired this office here in particular in which we are there's a lot of product uh and Innovation focused people a lot of folks who work in our technology function here in this in this office in Manhattan and wander the floors and sit down with them and and ask them what do you think and uh you know if you're hierarchy oriented you would work through your team and say okay give give me all the input I got a very different uh conversation going

do you ever get angry um no not really ever afraid uh yes yes so I'm afraid of I'm afraid of heights

are what about you think you but you are you so high up in the organization now that that makes you worried it is uh it's very specific I love the mountains I hike um and but in terms of work and challenges and so on does that make you afraid no

what's the MasterCard culture is there such a thing as the MasterCard culture yes it's come back to you know those you asked about leadership principles and talk to you about move fast and create value and the grow together part um there's an element of this is what we want it to be and a good part of that is already the reality um but I also mentioned the piece of doing the right thing I really believe it's running deeply uh in in you know in this company people do the right thing so I think that that sets us apart

we have um I think the grow together part also is really really strong here we have 125 offices I think in 89 countries it's a highly it's a very very Global business um and for us to come together which you have to do when you run a network business if everybody does their own thing then the solution for the you know for our customers will not be the samee and then the network doesn't work um so grow together is essential it's not only nice and helpful and uh good but it's also essential for us for what we do and uh the willingness to take folks along and align and coordinate is very high

why did we talk about move fast as well because you can be so uh focused on grow together that maybe you're too slow because you're trying to make compromises all day long and left and right so we're trying to calibrate that um a bit better um but I think fundamentally working together doing the right thing for our customers and growing together with our customers this is interesting where a lot of people took that term and said well this is about us and our customer us we're very very partnership

oriented which is really important earlier we talked about competition if you think about the value chain of payments today um used to be maybe a merchant and a bank that was involved uh and those were the key parties uh 10 years ago today there is uh isvs PSPs processors fintech startups Neo Banks it is such a long uh value chain today and the clarity with who is a competitor and who's a partner is completely blurred yeah if you don't have a partnership uh mindset if you don't look for how to grow together you're going to start to find that your uh customer it gets very very narrow yeah so that's um actually I made exactly that point at the investor day yesterday and uh we we had some breakout sessions and a lot of questions on that because our investors look at your investor looking at where might be new competitors coming from we look at them as potential competitors we hyper paranoid about that we're always looking for the partnership opportunity at the same time because somebody who uh has their own payment Solution that's fine but it could be a dramatic opportunity for us to power that payment solution without a funding source as a Mastercard or with a set of services other than other um C out there who you

admire um I spend quite a bit of effort to uh uh go out and um engage uh engage other CEOs it's f fascinating to spend time together um uh people I spend time with obviously our customers you know I spend time with Jane you spoke to Jane I used to work at city for 14 years so obviously that that's what we do for the listeners uh Jane is the CEO of City Bank right yeah

so um uh customer CEOs I um take um a lot of interest in going to the West Coast uh to uh some big Tech uh folks um um I regularly speak uh to uh to those companies Amazon Microsoft and so forth um and obviously formidable CEOs there so I'm part of various uh circles like the business Round Table in the in the US here where the biggest companies are organized and um every quarter we meet and you walk the hall and everybody walks the hall and says what do you think what about this what about that and I find it hugely important it's also fun

um so yes you have uh something which is really unique you have uh Foundation the Mard Foundation which is nearly um well got assets of nearly or roughly $50 billion so huge right right um now I happen to know the chief investment officer John Barker who is excellent right um but could you just um tell us what does having such H Foundation do to right the people at Mard

earlier I I talked about doing the right thing and decency when this company I poed in 2006 uh from previously being an association it was the decision at the time to take 11% of the stock at the IPO and put it into the foundation that is the Master Guard Foundation today um at that time it was also you know important to ensure the independence of that foundation so it should should have not been something that the company can decide at some point well we don't want to do this any longer yeah uh it was clear we wanted to do it I wasn't even there at that time um and it's now there um they um we have them come uh to our board meetings once a year but they run their strategy and wherever payments and Technologies evolved obviously we talk to each other they carry the brand which is important

I was um not too long ago at a u hotel in Nairobi and um gentleman helped me find the room and uh well walking down the H the hallway to the room and he says to me uh can I hug you and I'm like why um but please uh so he gave me a hug and says I just wanted to tell you the foundation has helped my kids get into college and the first kids in the family that uh got into the college so the foundation does they're focused on Africa um and they're doing great work there on on youth employment and and so forth um but we keep it independent they or they are independent full stop

now the company has meanwhile put out the MasterCard impact fund um where this is closer to the company where we put half a billion dollars into that uh to start with U three four years ago and uh um we uh start to fund activities that are on the longer range um of use cases Financial inclusion oriented where we pull people in into the digital economy but with the use case that the company itself maybe wouldn't do

um you think you think more companies should think this way a lot of companies do the partners that we have um when we um often times when we strike a strategic partnership with a bank for example the shared value piece is really hugely important they they ask us what are you all doing to make a difference beyond your immediate p&l we said W we're big on financial inclusion um we are big on supporting small business um we're big on diversity and so forth um so it it makes a big difference

other companies are doing it and um I I think it's fundamentally the right thing the private sector has a huge role to play um the expectation or rather the trust level that people around the world have in private sector versus the trust they show in government these days is high so I think uh the responsibil is on our shoulders to step up um but at the same time it's always important to keep in mind is what is the purpose of a corporation is to drive shareholder value and satisfy the customers and I think we struck a nice balance because particularly for us it's Financial inclusion we set a goal for 1 billion people that we will pull into the digital economy and we set it in 2015 for half a billion we renewed it in 2020 in the middle of covid uh we went out and said the next 500 million that were committing to this right now because particularly in Co it was really important because all small business kind of fell off a cliff because they didn't have the digital capability to operate in a world where everybody was stuck at home so we made that commitment we're reaching that um so this is fundament it's making a huge difference other companies finding their own sweet spot so when we when we talk to our customers they have particular relevance either in the community in which they operate and so forth but there's always an intersection point you find the like-minded partners and uh that's been very good for us from a business sense it's not only the right thing to do it's smart business

yeah and Michael at the um last question here what's your advice to young people

I was talking to our summer interns um at you know uh it was July I think that it just came to an end uh we have about 800 uh uh summer interns a year um around the company all over and I got that question from them so I was like what's your advice I said you know what um if you leave here and you left questions unanswered what a waste it's your opportunity now you you have permission to ask any question so you know for those young people let's say it's people that are look starting to take a new role um in in you know post studies and so forth use the opportunity of an internship to really nerd out ask what you ever wanted to do because that's that's the time where you can do that and that was the first piece of advice

the second piece of advice that I gave them is there's there's people walking around and say well Follow Your Passion great idea but if your passion um doesn't really work if you wanted to be in a corporate environment for example then that's yeah it's great but it's not uh always great so I said figure out where's the intersection point of what is your passion what actually matters and what could you be good at bring that together be more purposeful about that and um that got yeah that was a reasonable amount of debate on that point say yeah but you know I really like doing this but well if this is not that relevant maybe you find a different balance between what you really love to do and what also makes a difference and matters because then you're likely to work on something that has impact so those were two pieces of wise advice

and the last set is see if you can find a sponsor there's a lot of mentorship around but see if we can find a sponsor somebody really leans in for you and with you and isn't afraid to put your name on the table and it matters that's very good advice big thanks for being here and