Good morning. My name is Julianne, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the MasterCard Incorporated Q4 and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Please only press star 1 once to queue up for a question, as pressing star 1 multiple times may affect your position in the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1. Thank you. Mr. Devencourt, Head of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Julianne. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. With me today are Michael Meebok, our Chief Executive Officer, and Sachin Mera, our Chief Financial Officer. Following comments from Michael and Sachin, the operator will announce your opportunity to get into the queue for the Q&A session. It is only then that the queue will open for questions. You can access our earnings release, supplemental performance data, and the slide deck that accompany this call in the investor relations section of our website, MasterCard.com.

Additionally, the release was for us for the SEC earlier this morning.

Our comments today regarding our financial results will be on a non-GAAP, currency-neutral basis unless otherwise noted. Both the release and the slide deck include reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP-reported amounts. Finally, as set forth in more detail in our earnings release, I would like to remind everyone that today's call will include forward-looking statements regarding MasterCard's future performance. Actual performance could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Information about the factors that could affect future performance are summarized at the end of our earnings release and in our recent SEC filings. A replay of this call will be posted on our website for 30 days. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Michael Milak.

Thank you, Devin. Good morning, everyone. We finished the year strong. Fourth quarter net revenues were up 16%, an adjusted net income up 19% versus a year ago on a non-GAAP currency neutral basis. Our diverse capabilities in payments and services and solutions, including the acquisition of recorded future this quarter set us apart they also position us well for long-term growth as we outlined at our investor day and this is what you will see in the new and expanded partnerships we will discuss this morning the macroeconomic environment continues to perform well and it is underpinned by healthy consumer spending as we've seen in today's news the labor market is strong with low unemployment and continued wage growth inflation has moderated, but to varying degrees across categories and countries, consumers remain engaged. Affluent consumers have benefited from the wealth effect, while the mass segment remains supported by the labor market. Our Economics Institute expects a year of global economic expansion in 2025, defined by shifts in monetary and fiscal policy, albeit geopolitical concerns remain. Overall, we remain positive about our growth outlook. We will continue to monitor the external environment and stand ready to adjust if needed. We remain hyper-focused on successfully executing on what we can control. Our strategic priorities which fuel our growth algorithm. As we laid out in detail at our investor day, those three strategic priority areas include consumer payments, commercial and new payment flows, and services and solutions. A clear proof point on how we're executing is our steady drumbeat of share wins across products and geographies now I often highlight our larger wins on these calls with you but it's important to note that our local teams are competing for in winning deals of all sizes based on the differentiated value that we provide having a diverse portfolio with customers of all types is essential it allows us to further expand our customer base and enables us to break into new areas where we can partner and grow together. In 2024, we flipped or expanded hundreds of relationships globally. Let's first focus on the US, where we have won several large flips over the last few years. That momentum continued this quarter. ICBA payments, which serve thousands of community banks, will significantly expand its partnership with MasterCard. This includes card issuance across their partner banks' credit and debit portfolios. In mid-Florida, a large credit union will migrate their credit and debit portfolios to us. Both partners highlighted our differentiated product suite, analytics capabilities, and the expertise of our people as a key in their decision to expand their relationship with MasterCard. In the public sector space, we renewed our long-standing relationship supporting the Direct Express program, one of the largest social benefit card programs in the world. Direct Express disperses benefits including Social Security, Veterans, and disability onto MasterCards held by over 3 million Americans and the momentum also continues in the travel and retail verticals. Porter Airlines and Bank of Montreal will launch a new co-brand program with us in Canada. In the US we renewed our consumer and small business co-brand credit card partnership with IHG and Chase. They will leverage our data analytics and loyalty assets to enhance their value proposition and we renewed our co-brand partnership with Sam's Club who will continue to leverage our products and services our success extends across all regions with several significant renewals and expansions we secured long-term exclusivity on debit with Saudi National Bank we renewed and strengthened our partnership with new bank we've extended our relationship with Banco Santander in the UK and we successfully renewed our global premier credit card agreement with HSBC in over 20 countries. All these wins are a result of the successful execution of the strategic priorities we discussed at Investor Day. I will share a few highlights on each area starting with consumer payments. Now these flows represent a long runway of opportunity for sustained growth. Today there's over 11 trillion dollars and 1.5 trillion transactions in cash and check around the world. We are capitalizing on the significant secular opportunity by expanding acceptance, reimagining checkout, opening closed-loop systems, and enabling new verticals. First up, we're positioned to be the most accepted payments network in the world, with around 150 million acceptance locations globally today. Second, we are reimagining checkout, and that with our 2030 global plan to phase out manual card and password entry online in favor of smiles and fingerprints not only is that a better experience but it's also more secure and it's fully aligned with our data privacy principles and the online space needs that fraud rates are seven times higher online than in store and approximately 25 percent of online shopping carts are abandoned because checkout is just too slow our tokenization biometric capabilities sit at the heart of these solutions the proof well in 2024 we tokenized about 4 billion transactions per month which is up 40 times over the past six years and as we have said in the past there are many use cases for tokens take for example the next click of our multi option payment solutions we're rolling out the MasterCard one credential which allows consumers the flexibility and control to set their payment preferences in their banking app for each transaction if they so choose to be credit, debit, prepaid, or buy now, pay later, all behind one credential, one token. And the merchant, the merchant accepts that through the same simple and secure digital connections as always. No added work. Tokens provide tremendous value. We offer a set of services on and around those tokens, such as lifecycle management and authentication, which enhance that value. Now, while the growth of token makes the ecosystem safer and more secure, we also benefit on the natural tailwind associated with the growth of token usage shifting gears we're also driving incremental volume and transactions in our network by opening up closed loop systems beyond the transit opportunities we've talked about many times we're also partnering with local wallet providers to create greater simplicity and access for the end consumer in sweden we're working with swish so that users can tap to pay and store both domestically and abroad by adding their mastercard to the swish app In Latin America, we collaborated with Davi Vienda to co-create a digital first debit product aimed at driving financial inclusion. We signed an exclusive partnership with them to launch the product on the Davi Plata digital And our pay local service seamlessly connects with local digital wallets, enabling consumers who use MasterCard to make card payments across a broader set of local merchants. At the same time, merchants benefit from access to more consumers and the protections we provide. the solution supports local tourism that market that we traveled to where we couldn't pay provides a seamless consumer experience and helps drive cross-border volumes building on partnerships with leading wallet providers like alipay and grab pay several additional players in asia pacific will now open their wallets to cards this include dana in Indonesia, Touch and Go in Malaysia, Barkong in Cambodia, and Lankapay in Sri Lanka. We're also capturing new verticals like consumer bill payments. This quarter, we partnered with BMOBI in Brazil. BMOBI will integrate Click2Pay into their bill payment platform, enabling fast and secure payments for recurring services like telecoms and utilities. Now, as a network company, we're focused on enabling the broader ecosystem. That's exactly what we have been doing in the crypto sector. We have a well-planned, balanced strategy that serves financial institutions, crypto players and of course consumers to drive growth and provide choice in this space. We're partnering with a wide range of crypto players to enable consumers to buy cryptocurrencies on card and spend their crypto balances anywhere that MasterCard is accepted. I'm very excited about new partnerships with Crypto.com and MetaMask, just a few of the many new players we have added in 2024 and we're enthusiastic about the future of blockchain technology but to reach its full potential we believe there's a need for sound governance interoperability and real world use cases all this is a core competency of ours built over decades to meet these needs we developed the multi-token network mtn this quarter we partner with connexus by jp morgan the firm's blockchain base unit to integrate mtn as a payment settlement solution by bringing together the power and connectivity of MasterCard's MTN with Connexus digital payments we aim to unlock greater speed transparency and faster settlement capabilities for cross-border b2b payments and while it's early days we're excited about the opportunities which digital assets can bring to the world of payments as the space evolves complementing our existing solutions now while consumer payments offer a significant runway for growth commercial flows represent an even larger $80 trillion serviceable addressable market. Only about $3 trillion is carded today. In 2024, our commercial credit and debit volumes represented 13% of our total GDP and grew at 11% year over year on a local currency basis, just to give you the latest stats. On top of that, disbursements and remittances represent an additional $20 trillion in addressable market. We're pursuing that opportunity with MasterCard Move, where transactions were up over 40% year over year in the fourth quarter. But let's dig into commercial. First, we're expanding our global leadership in virtual cards by expanding across use cases, geographies, and verticals. For example, partnering with NetNOS to distribute our new mobile VCN to UK companies and their employees. We're deploying virtual cards with Citi in Argentina, the first deployment of VCN in that market. And in the travel vertical, we've established new partnerships with worldpay and emirates nbd to offer virtual cards to their customers we're also leaning into our success in travel and applying into new high potential verticals for example trade and logistics building on our previous announcement of dubai first world we're driving continued growth in this sector global fintech invoice bazaar will distribute new co-branded master cards to help digitize payments across the trade ecosystem and similar in consumer packaged goods, we partner with Deem Finance and Prime Dash to enable small business in the Middle East to automate payments to Coca-Cola distributors. This builds on partnerships with leading beverage distributors in Latin America that I spoke about in previous calls. We have good momentum on connecting small business in this space. We're also driving small business growth through expanded issuer partnerships. We signed an exclusive commercial with B&A, the state-owned bank in Argentina. AMP Bank in Australia will launch MasterCard debit cards for the new digital SME and consumer bank. And Ant International's World First will expand our partnership to now issue virtual cards for SMEs and new markets, including Singapore and Australia. Now, let me turn to our third strategic priority, services and solutions. As we outlined in our investor day, services represent a serviceable addressable market of at least 165 billion dollars we delivered almost 11 billion in service and solutions revenue in 2024 11 billion that's exciting but it's equally exciting that we're less than seven percent penetrated that's a significant runway for growth we have a clear plan to execute against it first we're developing and launching differentiated products this quarter we launched new services to support customer acquisition provide unique market insights, manage subscriptions, and identify threats. This includes closing on the acquisitions of both MINA technology and Recorded Future. Let's stay right there. Cybercriminals have been around for decades, but attacks and fraud attempts are increasing at high levels as commerce increasingly moves online and as AI becomes more prevalent. Our investments, both organic and inorganic, are key to fighting fraud and protecting the ecosystem. They also drive revenue growth. and add Recorded Future to this list. It is now part of MasterCard. Recorded Future is the world's largest threat intelligent company with more than 1,900 customers across 75 countries. Customers include over 50 percent of the Fortune 100 and government agencies in 45 countries, including more than half of the G20. We've been deploying AI at scale for well over a decade, So has Recorded Future. They leverage AI-powered insights to analyze threat data from every corner of the internet, and customers gain real-time visibility and actionable insights to proactively reduce risks. We now have an even more robust set of powerful intelligence, identity, dispute, fraud and scam prevention solutions. Together, these uniquely differentiated technologies will enable us to create smarter models, distribute these capabilities more broadly and help our customers anticipate threats before cyber attacks can take place that means better protection for governments businesses banks consumers the entire ecosystem and well beyond the payment transactions we're also leveraging our distribution at scale to deepen market penetration of our services and solutions for example we provide a fraud solution that facilitates real-time information sharing between merchants, issuers, and consumers to streamline disputes and reduce chargebacks. This quarter, we announced a new partnership with Stripe, who will offer these capabilities to their millions of users. In Latin America, Itaú and Ibanco will make them available across its digital channels to support millions of cardholders. In loyalty, we partnered with Nordea to consolidate their loyalty offerings, MasterCard, and launch new cashback offers across Norway and Sweden. and we're also selling it to new buying centers with traditional customers opening up a larger share of wallet for example we partner with the CISO at Webster Bank to deploy risk recon and cyber point solutions and finally we're seeing strong demand for our services and solutions across a more diverse customer base including online delivery services gaming companies and travel partners for example we expanded our partnership with DoorDash who will use our insights and analytics to optimize business performance globally. Sony PlayStation will leverage our capabilities to showcase digital receipt to cardholders and banking apps and provide purchase information to banks call center agents. And currency will incorporate our open banking capabilities to support Hilton's new debit co-brand offering. Services and solutions are a large and growing revenue opportunity. They are essential powerful virtuous cycle with our payments, where laser-focused and executing capitalized on a significant runway in services in front of us. So in summary, we delivered another strong quarter, closed out another strong year, there's significant opportunity ahead, the fundamentals of our business are strong, so I'm very optimistic about the future for us here at MasterCard. Our proven growth algorithm and differentiated solutions position us to deliver and to win as we've demonstrated time and time again. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Sachin.

Thanks, Michael. Turning to page three, which shows our financial performance for the fourth quarter on a currency neutral basis, excluding where applicable, special items and the impact of gains and losses on our equity investments. Net revenue was up 16%, reflecting continued growth in our payment network and our value-added services and solutions. Acquisitions had a minimal impact to this growth. Operating expenses increased 15%, including a 1PPT increase from acquisitions. And operating income was up 17%, which includes a minimal impact from acquisitions. Net income and EPS increased 19% and 22% respectively, driven primarily by the strong operating income growth and further aided by a discrete tax benefit recognized in the fourth quarter. EPS was $3.82, which includes an $0.08 contribution from share repurchases. During the quarter, we repurchased $3.4 billion worth of stock and an additional $644 million through January 27, 2025. So let's turn to page four, where I'll speak to the growth rates of some of our key drivers for the fourth quarter on a local currency basis. Worldwide gross dollar volume, or GDV, increased by 12% year-over-year. In the U.S., GDV increased by 9%, with credit growth of 8% and debit growth of 11%. Credit and debit growth was aided by the conversions of the previously announced Wells Fargo commercial credit and citizens debit migrations, respectively. Outside of the U.S., volume increased 13% with credit growth of 11% and debit growth of 14%. Overall, cross-border volume increased 20% globally for the quarter, reflecting continued strong growth in both travel and non-travel-related cross-border spending. Turning to page 5, switch transactions grew 11% year-over-year in Q4. Both card-present and card-not-present growth rates remain strong. Card-present growth was aided in part by an increase in contactless penetration, as contactless now represents approximately 72% of all in-person switched purchase transactions. In addition, card growth was 6%. Globally, there are 3.5 billion MasterCard and Maestro-branded cards issued. Turning now to slide 6 for a look into our net revenue growth rates for the fourth quarter discussed on a currency-neutral basis. Payment network net revenue increased 15%, primarily driven by domestic and cross-border transaction and volume growth. It also includes growth in rebits and incentives. Value-added services and solutions net revenue increased 17%. Acquisitions contributed approximately half of PPT to this growth. Growth was primarily driven by growth in our underlying drivers, strong demand for our consumer acquisition and engagement, and business and market insight services, the scaling of our security, digital, and authentication solutions, and pricing. Now let's turn to page seven to discuss key metrics related to the payment network. Again, all growth rates are described on a currency-neutral basis unless otherwise noted. Looking at each key metric, domestic assessments were up 10% while worldwide GDV grew 12%. The difference is primarily driven by cross-border mix. Cross-border assessments increased 24% while cross-border volumes increased 20%. The four PPP difference is primarily driven by pricing in international markets. Transaction processing assessments were up 15% while switch transactions grew 11%. The four PPT difference is primarily due to favorable cross-border mix and pricing. Other network assessments were 239 million this quarter. As a reminder, these assessments primarily relate to licensing, implementation, and other franchise fees and they may fluctuate from period to period. Moving on to page eight, you can see that on a non-GAAP currency-neutral basis excluding special items, total adjusted operating expenses increased 15%, which includes a one-PPT impact from acquisitions. Total adjusted operating expenses were higher than anticipated, primarily due to the impact of the acquisition expenses. The acquisition of recorded future closed earlier than expected in Q4 2024 versus originally expected in Q1 2025 and was therefore not part of our Q4 forecast. Excluding acquisitions, the growth in operating expenses was primarily due to increased spending to support the continued execution of our strategic initiatives. Now turning to page nine, let me comment on the operating metric trends. Starting with Q4, our switched volume metrics were strong with sequential increases versus the prior quarter driven by healthy consumer and commercial spending. As was the case with switched volumes, cross-border volumes also benefited from healthy spending, easier comps, as well as a pull forward of travel spent. Specific to cross-border card not present extra travel, we saw an uptick due to the purchases of cryptocurrency in Q4. Of note, the timing of high volume versus low volume calendar days as well as the timing of Black Friday impacted switched volume and cross-border metrics within the quarter. Transaction growth remained flat sequentially as compared to volumes due to higher average ticket sizes in Q4. Now, looking through the first four weeks of January, the metrics are holding up well and are generally in line with the fourth quarter. The increase in switched volume growth in the U.S. was primarily driven by an easier comp. Specifically, severe weather events across the country negatively impacted volumes this year and last year. However, the impact was more pronounced last year. As it relates to the decrease in intra-Europe cross-border volumes, this is primarily driven by the mix of calendar days and travel spent pull forward I just mentioned. Turning to page 10, I wanted to share our thoughts on fiscal year 2025. Let me start by saying that the fundamentals of our business remain strong, and we are well positioned for the opportunities ahead, driven by a diversified business model, the significant opportunity for further secular shift to digital forms of payment in both both consumer and commercial, and strong demand for our differentiated value-added services and solutions. The macro environment remains supportive of our base case reflecting healthy consumer spending, and we remain confident in our ability to successfully execute our strategy while maintaining a disciplined capital planning approach. Overall, we are positive about the growth outlook for the short, medium, and long-term. As it relates to our expectations for full year 2025, five, we expect net revenues to grow at the high end of low double digits to low teens range on a currency neutral basis excluding acquisitions. We estimate a headwind of approximately two PPT from foreign exchange, while acquisitions are expected to add one to 1.5 PPT to this growth rate for the year. From an operating expense standpoint, we expect growth to be at the low end of a low double digits range versus a year ago on a currency neutral basis, excluding acquisitions and special items. We expect a tailwind of approximately one to two PPT from foreign exchange, while acquisitions are forecasted to increase the OPEX growth rate for the year by approximately five PPT. To be clear, this impact of acquisition-related expenses was already contemplated in the three-year performance objectives that we shared with you last November at our investor the community meeting. Let's dig into the acquisition-related expenses a bit. We closed the acquisition of Recorded Future and Minna Technologies at the very end of 2024, and now we will see a full-year impact in 2025. The 5PPT impact can be broken down into three main components. Slightly more than 2.5PPT relates to the run rate expenses for operating the business. Approximately one PPT is from the amortization of acquired intangible assets related to the purchase price allocation and the remaining relates to integration costs and other one-time expenses. Now let me remind you about our acquisition philosophy. As you know, our acquisitions are strategy-led. We purchase companies that are complementary to our capability suite and they add to our addressable market. These companies are primarily in earlier stages with modest revenues compared to MasterCard, albeit fast growing. At the same time, these companies are in investment mode to drive longer-term growth. Post-acquisition, we look to scale revenues, drive synergies, and ultimately deliver positive operating leverage over the medium term, consistent with how we run our overall business. Now, turning to the first quarter of 2025, year-over-year net revenue growth is expected to be at the low teens range on a currency-neutral basis, excluding acquisitions. Acquisitions are forecasted to have a 1 to 1.5 PPT impact to this growth rate, while we expect a headwind of approximately 3 PPT from foreign exchange for the quarter. From an operating expense standpoint, we expect Q1 growth to be in the low double digits range versus a year ago, again, on a currency-neutral basis, excluding acquisitions and special items. Acquisitions are forecasted to have a 4 to 5 PPT impact to this OPEX growth, while we expect a tailwind of approximately 2 PPT from foreign exchange for the quarter. Other items to keep in mind, on other income and expenses, in Q1, we expect an expense of approximately $120 million dollars given the prevailing interest rates and debt levels. This excludes gains and losses on our equity investments which are excluded from our non-GAAP metrics. Finally, we expect a non-GAAP tax rate in the range of 20 to 21 percent for the full year and approximately 20 percent for Q1 based on the current geographic mix of our business. A lower forecasted tax rate for Q1 as compared to the balance of the year is consistent with prior years due to expected discrete tax benefits related to share-based payments in the first quarter. And with that, I will turn the call back over to Devin.

Thank you, Sachin. Thank you, Michael. Julianne, you may now open the line for questions.

Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Please only press star one once to queue up for a question, as pressing star one multiple times may affect your position in the queue. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Andrew Schmidt from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, Sachin. Thanks for taking my questions this morning. Good metrics across the board here. Great to see. If I could just dig into the cross-border piece, the month-to-date transit through Jan 28, if you could talk about just the drivers of the growth there, whether it was relatively similar to the fourth quarter, and then expectations for 25. And then if I could just sneak one more in, just thinking about 25, we get a lot of questions on the cap one to discover, maybe some thoughts about how you're thinking about that with respect to the model. Thanks so much.

Sure, no problem, Andrew. I'll take that question. So from a cross-border volume standpoint, just at the highest level, what I'm going to remind you is the value prop we offer from a cross-border standpoint continues to be incredibly solid. Our teams are out there. They're working hard. They're winning various kinds of portfolios, some of which Michael spoke about even today about, which is some of the co-brand programs we've got with various airlines, et cetera, et cetera. Specific to your question around the metrics, again, really good performance from a volume growth standpoint and cross-border at 20% for Q4. First of all, what you're seeing for the first four weeks of January is exactly that. It's the first four weeks of January. And, you know, what you're seeing in the nature of the 20% going down to 18% is going back exactly to the comments I made in my prepared remarks, which is at the end of the day, the vast majority of that you're seeing come through in intra-Europe, which is primarily being driven by two factors. One is a pull forward of travel spent into the month of December, and you can see those metrics because you'll see intra-Europe growth in December at about 23%, and then there's the calendarization of days, which I kind of mentioned to you as well. Those are the two factors, but fundamentally, the health of what we're seeing from an overall spend standpoint on cross-border continues to be excellent. We have no real reason to believe that going forward that, you know, there's something going to change as it relates to the value prop. Obviously, the strength of cross-border as well as domestic spend is a function of how consumer health is, and right now we're seeing the consumer to be in very good shape. We also mentioned about how commercial is actually performing well, and you know that commercial actually also lends to our cross-border metrics, so something to keep in mind out there as well.

All right, on the cap 1, Andrew, let me start and then I happily hand it to Sachin for the model side of the question. But overall, the acquisition is in flight. As we know, it's going through the motions. I think it's fair to say the indications are positive that it will be approved. There's a whole range of examples where we have strategic partners, we also compete with on certain aspects of the business look in the acquiring space for example so this is not a new situation for us now capital one is a tremendous partner to ours a highly strategic partner tremendous growth that we've seen in our joint business they have been public about shifting debit volumes to the discover network now we are a competing network and we will continue to invest in our network and ensure that we have a leading and differentiated solution out there at the same time we've been growing together in credit and other parts of the business so we value this partnership will continue on along

those lines fundamentally there's no surprises here to what we've said last time around Sachin yeah I'll just add to what Michael said like Michael said right now right I mean they've talked about Capital One has talked about migrating the debit volumes over I think you're aware about the fact that those debit volumes are primarily on the MasterCard network and you know we've built in our best assumptions, both from a timing and a, you know, migration pace standpoint into the full year thoughts that I've shared with you today. So again, you know, things might move around and they likely will just because ours is a forecast. There's no predictability. The deal's got to get approved. You know, migrations have to start, but we built in our best estimates as to how that's going to roll out.

One last thing.

I should add one more thing.

I talked about it in my prepared remarks earlier. There's great momentum in debit, which we have created in the U.S. So, So this isn't the only partner that we have, and we're building out the set of partnerships.

Our next question comes from Darren Peller from Wolf Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks, guys. Nice job. When we follow up on what we learned at your investor day, which was really helpful on the long-term trajectory of growth, if we could just take that and then put it into 25, what are you expecting more specifically around your value-added services in the year ahead of us that we're in right now versus the consumer payments just to triangulate with growth and maybe such and also just as a reminder you know we're exiting the year at a 16 percent constant currency growth obviously discovered could be a factor but what other comp compares or lapping just remind us how much is in the uh in the outlook for lapping or other factors that could cause a deceleration from the exit rate down to the 12 to 13 from 16 thanks again guys Sure. No problem.

So, first, the new question around value-added services and solutions.

Look, I mean, it goes back to what Michael said, Darren, in his prepared remarks, which is, you know, we continue to invest in that space. It continues to build out excellent capabilities, which are going after what is a sizable and fast-growing addressable market. So, you know, again, we're not giving you a forecast as it relates to what we expect value-added service solutions to grow in 2025, but the underlying fundamentals of what we're doing there continue to be very healthy. And, again, remember, you know, we gave you a little bit of color and vest a day as to what the composition of those revenues are, what the drivers of those revenues are, including payment network drivers, including what we're doing from an overall, you know, safety and security standpoint versus consumer engagement and acquisition standpoint. So there's a lot of good stuff going on, and this is broad-based. It is not region-specific. I just want to be clear. You know, sometimes people think about this as highly U.S.-centric or maybe U.S. and Europe. The reality is across the globe, we're working hard. The teams are working incredibly hard to actually keep pushing value-added services and solutions. We close the year strong again there, right? I mean, now, again, remember, value-added services and solutions is one of those things where quarter-over-quarter you might see some level of variability, but the reality is overall the fundamentals of the business continue to be very strong. Then your second question was around the fact that we closed Q4 exit rates at about 16% on a local currency basis, and you're kind of doing this compared with what the thoughts for 2025 are. A few things to keep in mind. Number one, there's a few things going on. Number one, you've got basically the fact that, you know, we talked about pricing coming on, starting off Q2 2024, ramping up in Q3 and Q4, you're going to start to see, you know, some level of lapping take place on that. We've had several significant wins in 2024, the likes of Citizens, the likes of Wells Fargo, and Unicredit. Now, Unicredit will still continue to convert because it's a multi-year conversion, but some of those are going to start to lap as the year kind of progresses, right? The other thing is, as I sit back and I just think about basic fundamentals, you know, the point really is you've got to kind of remember that overall, the consumer remains healthy. We factored that in. The thoughts we shared for 2025 is a range which is high end of low double digits to low teens, right? So, again, you've got to keep that in mind. In that, we're building in assumptions around FX volatility. FX volatility picked up in Q4. You saw that come through in the exit rate you're talking about. Hard to predict what FX volatility looks like through the end of the year of 2025. We build in our best assumptions around that. But things could move around on that as well. So, again, there are various factors which are actually influencing this. But that's what I kind of tell you more holistically as to what's going on here.

Our next question comes from Harshita Rawat from Bernstein. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Good morning.

I want to ask about stable coins. It's likely that we get some regulatory clarity in the U.S. this year. I know vast majority of stable coin usage is in crypto native use cases and trading. But are you seeing anything in the cross-border money movement front? And more importantly, and Michael, I know you talked about kind of like the new settlement capabilities and you've done a lot of work on crypto over the years. How are you positioned for the growth in the crypto ecosystem? Thank you.

Right. Thank you, Harshita. So overall, as I said in my prepared remarks, this is a space that we've been active in over a while. Your question doesn't really talk about the crypto space as crypto as an investment, you know, on-ramp, off-ramp. We've been doing this successfully. Crypto.com is clearly an exciting addition to the set of partnerships. You were really talking more about the potential of the underlying technology and what can it do. And the cross-border use case has been talked about for years now. Now, we've started to move beyond the approve of concept stage. Now, there are real transactions that took place, first one in Hong Kong last year. So we're in the business of stablecoin transactions. We're in the business of having the MTN live. It hasn't scaled yet. That's also the reality. But we have long believed that this is an interesting space for us B2B cross-border payments to get into. So I see it as a net addition and upside opportunity for us. There's enough push now. Crypto has gone mainstream with the ETFs. And there's clearly push from the incoming administration here in the US. So we'll see more momentum and I feel we're well prepared and our strong partnerships with players like JP Morgan, you know, and other large settlement players, settlement bank players will help us on that front. Now, this isn't the only cross-border solution that's out there. There is, you know, real-time payments where there's initiatives to potentially connect those systems. It's important to keep in mind that we're in 12 of large RTP markets where we have a presence. And so that's an interesting space for us to also watch. In the end, it fundamentally comes down to choice. Where do countries want to take this? Countries have looked at this as in potentially connecting in bilateral fashions. We've always been an advocate to saying multilateral approaches work better. That's what we've proven on the card side. So that's a topic that we engage on when it comes to RTP side of things, but also from uh the stable coin side with again interoperability between different kind of stable coins also matters which is kind of the same concept so exciting space um leaning in uh for now we're powering on with cross-border payments on the card side which work really well our next question comes from reina kumar from oppenheimer please go ahead your line is open good morning michael and such and thanks for taking my question um could you give us an update on your progress in gaining market share in europe and whether there are any particular countries that you're seeing stronger performance from right so um europe's been a a real success story for master card if i look back over the five last five six years we've seen tremendous growth on the continent seen tremendous growth in the uk um in the uk with market share leaders credit prepaid and in debit it's about a third of the cards the debit cards that are now MasterCard large conversions I just talked in earlier about you know extending our partnership with Santander in the UK so that's a growth story on the continent you know I'm particularly excited about the strategic partnership with Unicredit that's 13 markets across continents so there's not that many pan-European players in fact that is probably the most pan-European player there is that's It's a fantastic partnership, strategic in nature, but other breakthroughs, Beeper in Italy, Banco Popolare there, that's a large win. So big momentum. I think that's the first thing to say. The second thing to say is in these markets, it's not just about shifting shares, also really taking advantage of the secular opportunity that still exists in Europe. If you take some of the large developed economies, G7 economy like Italy, still significant amounts of cash to go after, and we're doing that very actively. And we're doing that very actively, also deploying our services in that space. Italy has historically been one of the most significant services opportunities for us. So with all the talk that's there about Europe, concerns about Europe, Europe's competitiveness, you know, in Davos, this is, you know, a big theme. Really, it's important to remember that our business in Europe is in the European economy overall. We're well-positioned in growing parts of that economy, and this is tremendous for us. You know, we've seen volumes grow in Europe at 16% levels. That's, you know, that's a tremendous growth rate for us. So overall, I think we're pressing every button that is there to press for us to push ahead on that growth story.

Our next question comes from Tynjin Kwong from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thanks a lot. I want to stay in Europe. If you don't mind and ask about MasterCard 2030, I think the whole one-click payments initiative to get rid of manual card entry in Europe, to me it feels like eliminating signature, which ushered in growth in contactless. Is that a fair analogy to think about MasterCard 2030 potentially pushing tokenization? I'm curious why Europe, why not more regions, and what makes Europe special for you to set this goal up for MasterCard?

So tokenization in Europe, when I think of the evolution of the European payment markets from PSD1 to PSD2 to PSD3, the topic of security the topic of consumer experience the topic of a fair and level playing field have been themes throughout all of these regulations this is a market in our view that's ripe for the you know doing away with one-time passports and keying in card numbers I think all everything that is needed to make that successful is there in Europe and we want to prove it it's been a strategy of ours to have reference markets and show that initiative works and we go where there's open arms and where we feel this is going to be successful in Europe we now have you know very relevant share position it makes us a strategic partner across markets because if you do this just in one country in Europe then you know it is going to be problematic so we have the regulation we have partnerships across the board so that's good now tokens are at the core of that and you know as I said earlier and biometric biometrics we have that technology deployed widely in Europe and then we'll see where we take it from that you know the wider use of tokens the wider use of tokens is you know this is just sets us up for exactly that and we'll be looking at other use cases and see what that can do for our company overall but you know it's it's it's a tremendous opportunity and of course this is not about just Europe you know you asked the question about Europe this is a global goal this is what we can go after as I said earlier it's it's a safer ecosystem that makes sense for everybody in the world where you know there's government interest and payments and so forth if we're seen as a responsible partner it drives overall payment ecosystem safety that's a fantastic position for us as well and I'm sure that will be received well globally we'll go region by region whenever we feel it's the right time.

Our next question comes from Ramsey Elisal from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, thank you for taking my question. Michael, I wanted to get your view on potential impacts of the sort of new political environment.

I'm just curious if you're expecting any or you're seeing any tailwinds or headwinds from policy changes, and more specifically, if we do end up seeing kind of widespread tariffs applied, which we may or may not, how would that impact your business Ramsey this is a you know it's it's a question that I think is top of mind in many in many industries so here's how I would go about that you know the new political environment first of all we've seen waves of political changes around the world I think at the earlier part of last year we were looking into 2024 and more than half of the population of the world is going to go to the polls from India to you know Europe and now in November in the United States so there is there is a lot of change there's a lot of volatility there's some political uncertainty but you know when we sit in our boardroom and we sit in our management team and we talk about this is payments will continue regardless because the economic you know we power the economy and we power in particular the digital economy and there is a fundamental underlying secular trend as we discussed at our investor day that just keeps going on so that's that's the fundamental starting point in response to your question now we have a new administration here in the United States confirmations haven't fully been done yet but you know the Secretary of Treasury is confirmed and so for some of the key partners that we we would normally engage with and we have an administration coming in that is touting a business friendly approach and that's fundamentally good for us you know the conversation around tariffs and the intended intended use of tariffs it's been discussed we have to see how it plays out and what will happen it's also clear we're not in the import export industry so the way that we would be affected is really in indirect ways and how potentially some of our customers and partners get affected by that so that's something that we'll come to when we get i think the point that i just made before fundamentally underlying drive of a digitizing world questions like digital trade are going to be important questions so how's the world dealing with digital trade and how digital trade policy will play out over the years and we have been actively engaging here in the us in Europe, in ASEAN, and so forth. So important topic for us to continue to watch in advance because that's good for all economies around the world. So fundamentally, positive business outlook here from the U.S. administration. And we see a Europe that is now in active conversations with the second term of Ursula von der Leyen to drive a more growth-oriented approach in Europe as well, which with our position in Europe should be a good thing.

Our next question comes from Dave Koning from Baird. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yeah. Hey, guys. Thanks. Good job. I guess my question, you mentioned FX volatility briefly. It got better kind of through Q4 and quite a bit better in January. I just want to refresh on that. That helps the transaction line, right? And it should help the transaction yield going forward. Should that be a nice accelerant factor to the transaction yield over the next quarter to if it stays kind of where it is now? David, so yes, it's in our transaction processing assessments line.

That's where it is. So you got that right. And again, volatility will be what volatility will be. But to the extent, you know, there's higher volatility, you get the impact comes through in that line item, which impacts yields positively to the extent it kind of, you know, goes in the opposite direction, it has a negative impact on yield. but that's the line item where you'll see that.

Our next question comes from Brian Bergen from TD Cowan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, all. Good morning. Thank you. Wanted to ask on rebates and incentives, just how to think about the level of renewal activity here in 25 and directionally, just any commentary you can share on how you expect R&I growth to progress versus how you finished in 24. Sure.

So, Brian, again, you know, I think Michael kind of talked about this a little bit earlier we continue to compete out in the marketplace we are winning uh and we're winning the right kinds of portfolios which is really important we're not going to win every portfolio we're going to hopefully win them yeah and we don't want to and um but we want to win the right kinds of portfolios which is what we've been doing and that's the plan going forward as well from a renewal activity standpoint nothing unusual to call out in 2025 as in you know there isn't like a lumpiness in terms of renewals in 25 versus prior years so it's kind of business as usual. Our teams are out there engaged with our customers, selling on the basis of the value we deliver across payments, but also across value-added services and solutions. And, you know, that's been a key enabler to help us win on the payment side. So, super important for us to continue to do that. I'll tell you from an overall rebates and incentives standpoint, you know, you can see what the metrics are for Q4. For Q1, we expect rebates and incentives as a percentage of payment network assessments to be, uh, roughly similar to what we saw in Q4. Um, uh, I'm not going to give you an outlook as it relates for the, to the full year. I mean, that's really subject to what kind of deal flow and deal activity we see. The most important thing to keep in mind is, while we're all very focused on the level of rebates and incentives we pay, what we're even more focused on is driving an accretion in our net revenue yield. And that is really important.

And that's what we'll continue do from a strategy standpoint and an execution standpoint it comes back to the virtuous cycle between payments and services we have to be in we have to be relevant in payments we have to be in the flow so we can apply our payment solutions and our services solutions that is you know what's always in focus and there are strategic portfolios to win and less strategic portfolios to win but important across the different spectrum of different types of wins. As I talked about smaller deals earlier, the mix of all of that is always on the outcome of an attractive net revenue yield. That is the target in mind where we press all of them.

Our next question comes from Tim Chiodo from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you for taking the question. Just given the stronger dollar, there's been a lot of incoming questions around the hedging strategy. I just thought maybe it'd be a good opportunity to recap some of the mechanics. I understand you've talked about doing it on a net basis, a basket of roughly 30 currencies, but not hedging some of the functional currencies. Maybe you could just recap the approach and some of the mechanics and how this all flows through to the income statement. Sure, no problem.

So let me first define where the exposure arises from and then what the hedging strategy is. So you've got to think about the exposure to foreign exchange rates coming across three primary areas. One is what we call transaction exposures, which is when the transaction currency is different than the functional currency of the business unit in question. The next is what we have in the nature of monetary assets and liabilities, where the currency of those monetary assets and liabilities is different than the functional currency of the business unit in question. And the third is what we call translation exposure, which is the conversion of our overseas earnings into U.S. dollars. So for example, we are Euro functional for the European entities. Those Euro earnings are ultimately translated back to U.S. dollars when we do our as reported numbers. So there are three levels over which we get these exposures. We hedge layer number one, which is transaction exposures. We hedge them. We have a philosophy around that. We have hedge ratios which vary by currency. They're generally in that range of, call it somewhere in that 50% to 80% range in terms of what we hedge on a net basis, net of expenses. So, again, that's kind of the thinking there. There are some currencies which are not necessarily hedgeable just because the market is not liquid enough, and we don't hedge those. We also don't hedge right down to the smallest currency exposure, which is there. So we exercise materiality thresholds on that. On the monetary assets and liabilities, similar to transaction exposures, we hedge those as well, right? And again, it's based on what the forecasts are. On the translation exposures, we do not hedge them. And the reason you don't hedge them is we view our hedging strategy as being one of focused on driving the right economic outcome for the company. So what we try and do is we hedge cash flow exposures where we expect cash movements to take place. In the instance of translation, there is no real cash movement taking place from a euro functional entity to a u.s. dollar functional entity the cash movement takes place when dividends are made and then we'll hedge the dividend payment at that point in time so that's kind of the philosophy as to how we go about hedging also remember on translation exposures which are not hedged which is what i just spoke about right now things move around right i mean we all know that there's dollar strength you know in the last couple of months and then the zero strength or there's brl strength brazilian real So these things tend to revert to the mean. We run the business for the fundamentals of the business in terms of driving underlying value. Currencies will do what currencies do. We hedge them on an economic basis, much like I just explained.

And the one thing I would like to add to that is we love the fact that we have a geographically diversified business. So this comes with it. This is a fundamental differentiator for us. and many of these markets around the world are fast-growing markets where that is where we find the biggest secular opportunity. So EFX is the last thing that I think about. I think about the growth opportunity in those markets.

Our next question comes from Trevor Williams from Jeffries. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks very much. I wanted to go back to domestic assessments and the growth there relative to GDV and purchase volume. There's been a pretty consistent spread between those growth rates over the last few years and then Sachin you called out cross-border mix as a driver of that spread this quarter if you could just unpack what that means and if we should interpret as meaning if cross-border volume is outgrowing GDV that we'll kind of see that mixed headwind persist thanks sure so the first thing I'll mention in terms of the the delta between what we see in domestic assessments and GDV is there's a impact which is taking place there.

So while you see the numbers as we've kind of talked about it as 10% and 12%, the reality is the 10 is a rounded down number, the 12 is a rounded up number. So the delta isn't as big as it kind of seems out there. But kind of that's by the way, just FYI. On your question around the cross-border mix component, here's the reality. By its very definition, domestic assessments does not include cross-border revenue. GDV includes cross-border volumes. And so what happens effectively is if GDV, if cross-border volumes are growing at 20%, which is what we kind of reported for the fourth quarter, you've got the impact of that coming through in the GDV number. You have no associated revenue coming through in domestic assessments. And that's what I mean by cross-border.

Next question comes from Will Nance from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, I appreciate you taking the question. Michael, I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on the European market and following up on the kind of mid-teams growth you've been putting up in that geography more recently just wanted to get your thoughts on the competitive dynamics with some of the local schemes being folded up into the european payments initiative i think including in your home market of germany just any thoughts about how this kind of changes the landscape and just remind us kind of conceptually how you think about the competitive dynamics on the continent thanks all right so um that's a great question and I always love to talk about my home country the you know I want to put a stat into your mind you know earlier on we talked about how we're driving

payments growth by shifting volumes from domestic networks and closed loop networks you know over the years we have driven up our switching ratio to 70% so that's an important as a as a backdrop into this question so we have success and we know how to deal with domestic you know competitors and partners now on that backdrop particularly in Europe there has been over the years push to come up with local payment solutions as an alternative offer to consumers and there's a whole range of reasons why that is contemplated in Europe partly sovereignty partly more control you know all of that the fundamental truth though is that in the end the consumer is a really deciding factor here what's a good user experience how about availability if you put a new app into a payment market it has tons of choices already it's gonna be very hard to convince merchants and consumers to change we've seen it in the US with a bank-led app as well. So all in, we feel this is good for competition. It motivates us to continue to compete and invest in our proposition across channels. We talked about the token topic earlier on and how that makes checkout easier and so forth. So right now, we are looking at particularly at Wero. So Wero is currently an initiative of three countries. This was multi-country in previous years and now it's down to three and you know the first transaction took place in december so this proof of concept pilot stage and we'll see where it goes at this point in time we don't see it as a material concern or threat to our business um you know but you know our part our approach has always been of one part of one of partnership um you know we partner with domestic schemes in many countries around the world maybe on the services side and we'll see how that goes over time The more choice there is, because it will generally bode for a level playing field on the competition side is which we'd like, and then we'd love to compete with our solutions.

Today we can squeeze one more question in.

Certainly. Our last question will come from Sanjay Sakrani from KBW. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning.

So I'll speak to the fact that the metrics you're talking about for the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter is the acceleration you're kind of alluding to. I think at the highest level, we should all kind of take comfort in the fact that the consumer continues to be very healthy and we're seeing strong consumer spending and good commercial spending as well. So those are important. As it relates to whether it's driven by share or not driven by share, frankly, quarter by quarter, there is, you know, very minimal impact, which is there from a share standpoint, because the wins which we've talked about have been helping our volume growth in the third quarter as they have in the fourth quarter. So it's really the underlying strength of the consumer and commercial spend, which is awesome. There's a little bit of lift, which is coming from crypto, which we kind of talked about, right, which is there. And there's a little bit in the nature of the travel spend pull forward kind of, which I spoke about in my prepared remarks. But other than that, I got to tell you, I mean, look, I mean, you know, when you do the right things in the market, you win the right portfolios, and those portfolios go at a good pace, and there's a healthy consumer, you tend to see the kind of metrics you see, which is what we're kind of showing you right now.

Thank you, Sachin.

Michael, any closing remarks? well i'm happy we got sanjay in even though we're over time so excellent uh good conversation uh thank you very much for your support as always um this is a uh there was a lot going on this quarter so it was good to over overrun a little bit um i still want to do what i always do is thank the 34 000 colleagues at mastercard for being out there with our customers every day and pushing this business forward and thank you to all of you for your support we'll speak to you next quarter.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, everyone.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.