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 acquisition of BVNK 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 again.

Thank you.

Mr. Davencourt, Head of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Julianne. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for a call to discuss the details around our agreement to acquire BVNK, which we announced earlier this morning. With me today is Joran Lambert, our Chief Product Officer. Following some comments from Jorn, the operator will announce your opportunity to get into the queue for a Q&A session. It is only then that the queue will open for questions. I would like to emphasize that the purpose of this call is to discuss our announced acquisition and how it fits into our overall strategy and to address any related questions you may have. So we would ask that you limit your questions to these matters. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that today's call may include forward-looking statements regarding MasterCard's future performance after performance could differ materially from these forward-looking statements information about the factors that could affect future performance are summarized in our recent sec files a replay of this call we posted on our website for 30 days with that i will now turn the call over to our chief product officer jordan lambert thank you devon hello and thanks to all for joining us today i'm very excited that today mastercard announced a definitive agreement to acquire BVNK, a market leader in stablecoin payments orchestration and execution.

BVNK operates B2B2C and enables businesses to send, receive, convert, and hold digital currency for payment use cases, such as business payments, global payouts, P2P, and Me2Me. For decades, MasterCard has brought trust, of equity and security to payments as technology evolves we expand consumer choice and we innovate alongside our existing and new partners in the ecosystem to log value for their end customers digital currencies and tokenized deposits are no exception this acquisition once closed will advance our digital currency strategy while opening up incremental opportunities the The addition of BVNK to MasterCard Network would bring more optionality and end-to-end capabilities to meet the needs of our customers and partners for the years ahead, all aligned with our current strategy and focus on driving long-term growth. Let's start with a bit of context. With increased regulatory clarity in multiple geographies, digital currencies, including stablecoins, have moved beyond their origins of crypto trading instruments. They are now a way to move value alongside established methods such as cards, bank transfers and real-time payments. Stablecoins have actually existed for over 10 years, but we now see a marked step change in three areas. More use cases, more regulation and more participation. First, the adoption of digital currencies is growing across different use cases such as B2B, Global Payouts, P2P and Me2Me, or Wallet Funding. And Boston Consulting Group, for example, noted over 50% growth in stablecoin payments use cases in 2025, standing at over 350 billion. at a functional level digital currencies offer distinct attributes 24 7 availability borderless transfers programmability immutability speed put simply they function as a globally accessible borderless real-time settlement system it is another option to settle funds just like ACH is already today. So let's dive a little deeper in the use cases that can benefit from that function. On the B2B side, there are compelling use cases where speed, transparency, and predictability matter most. We see opportunities in cross-border B2B payments, especially for small and medium enterprises, looking to optimize collections, cash flow and treasury operations, reduce effects risks, and overall improved transaction speed and traceability. It's another way for businesses to move money with the right levels of trust and compliance. Think of a flower exporter in Ecuador that needs to collect receivables from all across the world or the shipping company who needs to optimize liquidity across regions. We also see opportunities in global payout flows, such as payroll and payouts to gig workers, creators and freelancers in dozens of countries. it's a fast-growing and complex operation that can be streamlined using stablecoin thirdly p2p flows this can be cross-border remittances where stablecoin can offer another choice and can improve speed think of a worker in the us who wants to send stablecoin each month to her parents in the philippines but this can also include paying a friend locally who wants digital currency or what we call a me-to-me transaction where i use fiat to fund a digital currency wallet and for all these use cases there is applicability in both domestic and cross-border environments these areas alone have a massive addressable market bvnk combined with our network solutions like cards and mastercard move become another tool to unlock that tan Beyond these opportunities right in front of us, though, new times are emerging through use cases including account funding for buying and selling of tokenized assets, like tokenized treasuries or money market funds, for prediction markets, for crypto trading and DeFi, for store of value purposes, or even areas like treasury and liquidity management for businesses. We're in the very early innings of this space. To be clear, we do not see a change in how consumers pay for goods and services. Cards work exceptionally well. Physical or mobile card credentials offer a frictionless and predictable user experience in store and online, on parallels worldwide acceptance and consumer reach, robust consumer protections and very strong security and fraud protection. there is no consumer problem to be solved here as a matter of fact crypto and stablecoin wallets providers all over the world are equipping their customers with card credentials to give more utility to their wallets their their customers benefit from a simple and secure experience anywhere in the world and all participants benefit from the network the second discontinuity or the second step change besides the growing use cases is that regulatory frameworks for stable coins are rapidly developing bringing greater clarity around issuing custody compliance and consumer protections this is giving the financial industry the confidence to participate directly we expect that in time almost every financial institution and fintech will provide digital currency services to their customers be it with stable coins or tokenized deposits. Several FIs are already on that journey. Others are building stablecoin consortia. That is a game changer for this industry. It also puts a strong light on rigorous compliance standards and practices. And the third step change as more participants into the market is that the level of fragmentation multiplies. Indeed, we see increasing issuing of stablecoins and tokenized deposits in multiple currencies across multiple chains through many intermediaries we believe this complexity will only increase and as a result there will be increased need for trusted interoperability that seamlessly connects across fiat and tokenized systems a role we play successfully in cards today businesses and consumers require a secure compliant and predictable user experience and instant conversion between currency formats and payment types in summary increased participation more use cases developing regulation and fragmentation or slowly moving digital currencies from the periphery of payments into more mainstream financial services more and more the evolution of the stablecoin ecosystem looks like landscapes MasterCard delivers unique value to regulated fragmented and global ecosystems in need of connectivity and interoperability this is core to what we already do in payments and where our reach and acceptance positions as well to deliver value now with that landscape set let's talk specifically about bvnk as i said earlier bvnk is a stable coin payments orchestrator that sits directly in the flow of funds, addressing multiple payment use cases. BVNK supports business and fintechs through four products, send, receive, store, and convert. Send is about paying suppliers, partners, employees, and customers in digital currencies from a fiat balance or separate digital currency balance. Receive enables the receipt of payments in digital currencies from customers or partners. SOAR is the capability to hold funds in digital currency linked accounts or wallets. And CONVERT is about moving between currency or currency formats, be it fiat to stablecoin or stablecoin to stablecoin or stablecoin to tokenized deposits using one platform. Convert and store are naturally linked to send and receive. Through this solution set, BVNK abstracts the complexity of blockchain payments. They initiate, route, and settle payments. Its modern API-driven platform integrates easily in existing platforms across the ecosystem, enabling customers to access liquidity providers, tablecoin issuers, and multiple chains through a single connection without having to build or maintain this infrastructure themselves. While Sends, Receive, Store, and Convert may sound simple, delivering them at scale across multiple geographies is tremendously complex and often involves stitching together solutions from many players and connectivity with the financial institution. The way these products are set up makes them highly versatile to cater for existing and yet to emerge use cases. Crucially, BPNK embeds licensing, compliance, and regulatory tooling directly into its offering. The authorization to operate in key markets around the world is a unique competitive advantage. This allows customers to operate within regulatory frameworks without taking the associated operational and regulatory burden on themselves. And then finally, the licensing and the technical platform enables a wallet-as-a-service offering. Customers can begin offering stablecoin services without having to build or operate the underlying technical or regulatory infrastructure themselves. So by combining payment orchestration, compliance enablement, and wallet services, PVNK significantly reduces the time to market, an increasingly important advantage we see for banks and other regulated financial institutions. So let's talk a little bit about how it all comes together. The question is not whether stable coin rails are better than fiat rails, but how both can be combined in a single offering and distributed at scale. MasterCard adds immediate global scale rules credibility and distribution. we partner with tens of thousands of fintechs and financial institutions and provide the trust reliability and reach required to make digital currency based solutions combined with existing payment methods a powerful proposition let's have a look at how dvmk and mastercard plug in together it's about payments services and settlement on payments we plan to make it seamless to move from fiat to digital currencies and vice versa by connecting and virtually vertically integrating the mastercard and pvmk stacks senders and receivers do not need to switch to a new ecosystem or wonder what rails or instruments their counterparty supports think again about the flower exporter in ecuador i mentioned earlier when the flower shop pays by sending stablecoin both parties have visibility on when the payment occurs very different to today the exporter has payment certainty and access to the funds immediately we can help send receive as well as convert or the worker in the u.s sending money to her parents in the philippines bvnk plus mastercard could help her convert fiat u.s dollar to stablecoin move the funds quickly, and help her parents receive and convert from stablecoin to Philippine pesos. Or else, her parents could store it in a wallet that gets set up for future use, to which we link a card. Or even if I live in New York and I want to pay a friend who only wants better for my share of our vacation rental, or I want to fund my own digital currency wallet to enable polymarket or crypto trading. We can now offer that conversion from fiat US dollar to the stablecoin and in the me-to-me example, allow you to hold the coin in order to facilitate the trade. Remember, these counterparties may want to use their existing provider on different chains with different stablecoins and different currencies. And our role as payment orchestrator is to enable this and move value seamlessly. Also this will enable us to offer new services, including playing a new role in offering wallet as a service to Mastercard customers, a low lift way for them to enter the space. And obviously the wallets would come with an embedded card. Over time, financial institutions may look for their own technology stack on their own licensing and also there, BVNK has a rich infrastructure services offering. And then third, we will look to offer more settlement optionality, leveraging BVNK for our card settlement cycles, combining MasterCard's proven settlement processes and operating discipline with new stablecoin to fiat connectivity and faster settlement process while most of the attention or headline today is on stablecoins we believe that tokenized deposits could play a significant role in the future especially for our financial institution we imagine stablecoins and tokenized deposits will coexist and bvnk plus mastercard is an orchestration player and network at scale that enables interoperability between these forms of tokenized currency. This will take time to develop. It is arguably even more nathons than stablecoin for payment, but we see it as a true growth opportunity and one that can scale. And we will adapt and pivot as the landscape takes shape and morphs. This is a journey, and we are well-equipped with all the right tools. So the strategic fit is clear and the opportunity to continue to innovate in payments is exciting. Commercialization, however, is equally important. And to that end, one of the biggest growth drivers in this business is simply volume. Digital currency volume, including stablecoins and tokenized deposits, that is converted, sent, and or received. There is value BPMK and MasterCard will be able to drive across all these areas and we can monetize that, especially in a more fragmented world. On top of that, there are new opportunities, such as for our value-added services and solutions, including our safety and security solutions and more. Essentially, with BPMK, we add tools for our customers to address a large and growing secular TAM, as well as expand MasterCard's TAM. This spans B2B, global payouts, P2P, and me-to-me flows, and flows that were otherwise not addressable, like conversion between fiat and stable coins, crypto trading, and transacting tokenized real-world assets. All of this equates to incremental value for our customers, the global payments ecosystem, and for our investors. now this space is still in its early innings and it will take a whole ecosystem to develop it this is why beyond this acquisition we have brought together a vibrant network of partners in our crypto partner program and we will continue to focus on empowering our customers and our partners to innovate and scale on an open network we look forward to closing the transaction and bringing our technologies together to allow for seamless interoperability across digital assets and fiat currencies for our customers and their end consumers and businesses across the world we continue to put mastercard as a center of payments and add to our addressable market we continue to innovate enhance our capabilities and offer choice to our customers which allows us to serve them better so we can we can all grow together over the long term And with that, I will pass the call back to Devin.

Thank you, you're very clear. Julianne, with that, you can please open the call for questions.

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star, then 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. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Sanjay Sakrani from KBW. you. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning. Thank you, Bjorn, for the summary. I guess just maybe a couple of questions for me. What was sort of the decision-making process to buy versus sort of build this capability, understanding that BBNK has made substantial progress in sort of consolidating a lot of the different currencies and such? But then separately, I wanted to understand sort of what you guys would do with the store feature, because that would sort of get you closer to the consumer, correct? And that's something that you guys have shied away from. Just trying to understand that.

Yeah, thank you. Great questions. So clearly, for every new endeavor that we pursue, we are looking at build, partner, And in this specific case, this is a quite complex ecosystem with quite complex technology. And BVNK has spent the last seven years building not just the technology, but also obtaining licenses in multiple geographies, developing the connectivity with liquidity players, with financial institutions, even with ACHs and global clearing platforms and so for us to build would actually require quite a bit of time and uh and we felt that an acquisition in this case will bring us much faster to market and will enable us to uh to serve our customers better so that's kind of what was essentially the rationale bvnk comes with a group of very very talented people with deep understanding and deep connectivity in that market, and again, I think it's very difficult for that to build organically fast. On the second point, BD&K is a B2B2C business. So they distribute, including the wallet as a service, via intermediaries. An example of that is, for example, Remitly, whereby when a consumer remits money from one side of the globe to another, Remitly would spin up a wallet for that receiver, and that is a technology provided by BVNK. So it is not direct to the consumer, but via intermediaries, and we expect that that function we would continue to distribute as well through banks, through fintechs, and others. Got it. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Ramzi Elisal from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Given the debate around stablecoin yield payments and the Clarity Act, it seems like banks feel a little uneasy about stablecoins. I guess, will BVNK and your overall stablecoin strategy provide banks with opportunities to participate in stablecoin economy, or is there a risk of channel conflict?

So our expectation, so firstly, we think of the space as digital currencies, not just stable coins, meaning currencies that are made available on-chain to do on-chain operations. That can take the shape of a stable coin, which is fully backed. That can take the shape of a tokenized deposit that is backed by the bank's balance sheet. The underlying technology to make it happen and the need to interoperate between uh the fiat world and the on-chain world um is the same and so we we really believe that the market will evolve with the coexistence of these instruments and with our our um capabilities uh to be the the oil in that machine let's say as far as the clarity act is concerned we'll see what what pans out and regardless of the outcome of that we we expect that many banks will look to offer digital currency services to their consumers some will do that in the form of a stable coin and indeed in the us for example you have multiple consortia of banks that are already looking to issue stable coin you have a number of banks that are already issuing stable coin and in some cases it will be in the form of digital of tokenized deposits again we we uh are um you know uh we are in a little bit indifferent to what the form is concerned but the evolution over time over the next couple of years towards more use cases for on-chain payments we believe in strongly thank you our next question comes from brian Bergen from TD Cowan.

Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Aside from the benefits of clearly the orchestration and the infrastructure layer that you talked about as the settlement rare, can you just talk more in detail about the incremental monetization opportunities this could allow for in your future portfolio on both the consumer and the commercial side? I'm curious, you know, talk about where you think on the consumer side you might be able to start with incremental modernization activity sooner? And then where in the commercial portfolio, I'm thinking about treasury type use cases, where might you be most excited about there?

Yeah, so as I mentioned, the BVMK has four products, send, receive, convert, and store. In any type of operation that we talk about, the on and off ramp or the conversion between one stablecoin to another, one or multiple of these products are being used, and whenever these products are being used, there is an opportunity to price for that. And so that's where we see, obviously, the opportunity. Then it's a matter about which use cases will get more traction, which use cases are emerging. And today, indeed, the use cases that have most traction today already is the payouts, the disbursements and you know paying a gig worker paying um a uh a um a contractor uh bvmk for example partners with deal in order for this um the salary payouts and remittances is a big one and i mentioned remotely as an example and then indeed b2b collection or b2b accounts payable and and receivable that one i think we also believe has has significant offside as it provides traceability and speed and affects certainty for players to work with in addition to that as we will link those products within our mastercard move we believe that we have an opportunity to move deeper into these kind of flows, including with effects. PVNK currently does not perform effects services, but that is clearly an opportunity for us to increase our monetization opportunity.

Our next question comes from Hrshida Rawat from Bernstein. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning. So two quick ones. So one, I think building upon like Ramsey's question, Does this create channel conflict with some of your fintech peers, some of whom have made kind of similar acquisitions? And then second, BB&K had a close partnership with one of your large network peers. How do you think about that? Thanks.

Yeah, well, so great question, Sheetha. So this market is in the very, very early innings. we believe that like with the fiat market, you have many intermediaries, you have a large value chain, you have swim lanes within that value chain, and occasionally the swim lanes don't overlap, but it's not a zero-sum game. It's not because when they overlap, one loses, one doesn't. As a whole, we can lift the tide for all boats, and I think this is very much the case here in this space where there's so much still to discover so much still to uh to unpack and to grow um so i i do think whereas there might be areas whereby siblings overlap i think by the by we we offer the platform for everybody to grow everybody to innovate and to deliver value to the customers and that includes those who have made investments in some of that we are partnering across many areas and we don't think that will change. You may have seen the last couple of months whereby a nice and other capital market players are moving to the digital asset space. Imagine the size of that market and all that will need interoperability between fiat and the digital asset space. So I think the opportunity is still so vast and still so unknown that that that we don't worry too much about that I think we can we can grow all together and in terms of what was the second question I think it was okay oh it was that about their close partnership that BBNK had between a few large peers oh yeah yeah so so look i i mean yes they they uh they had a uh distribution agreement with visa and we don't know to what extent that will uh be uh be continuing it was a very small part of their uh of their

overall pictures it's not something that we worry too much about um at this point our next question comes from will nance from goldman sachs please go ahead your line is open hey i appreciate you taking the question um i wanted to ask maybe on some of the use cases that you outlined obviously you know most of them focus on kind of the new flow opportunities uh beyond consumer payments and you know historically the company has talked about these you know kind of disparate pools of payments being incredibly large but historically they haven't been you know nearly as monetized as the consumer payment ecosystem so like one i'm wondering if you could just speak to kind of monetization for the flows that BB&K looks at but maybe more importantly when we think about you know all of those pools of payments whether it's you know remittances b2b cross-border how do you think about sizing you know what percentage of some of these opportunities stablecoins makes sense for or is a better rail for relative to some of the traditional fiat rails that you know you and the industry have traditionally used to process these payments thank you yeah so firstly you're absolutely right we think of this as uh accelerating uh our ability to

address the tan uh of certain flows that we have already identified like the cross-border remittances the disbursements the b2b payments and we think in these especially in high friction use cases where speed and traceability and convertibility is important. This gives us additional tools to go after those flow in addition to what we already have. I don't think it ends there. I think, like I mentioned, there's still emerging pockets of TAM and SAM that are very early, but that we can see the first shoots of. That may also be a quite meaningful addition to what we're looking at already today.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Andrew Schmidt from KeyBank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you for taking the questions and congrats on this acquisition. Maybe just high-level question on financial profile and modernization model, just to get that out of the way.

And then just when you think about just folding this into the go-to-market effort, obviously, BVNK has both FI and ESP focus. maybe talk about just you know what you're going to emphasize and how you balance those consistent constituents in the ecosystem thanks so much uh yeah so so um on on the um i think we already kind of discussed the monetization model with with their four products with the opportunity to um to earn money every time uh that one of the four multiple of the four is being used uh in any transaction and then in addition to that we would add our services so our our ability to get into effects but also ability to apply the master card services as we know it's including the security services the multi-layer security services that we have in terms of in terms of the second question.

Can you read that again, Andrew?

Just the go-to-market push across how you fold this in in terms of commercialization efforts across both PSPs and FIs.

Yeah, no, no. Great point. So increasingly, BVNK has moved into servicing fintechs over the last couple of years. They initially started with some of the trading firms, but very much so it's now on the on the fintech side we think that fintechs and financial institutions are where our growth is expected to come from that is where uh we we believe um the the scale opportunities lie um and so over over the next couple of um years uh pretty much uh i almost all the financial institutions will start moving to that space and we want to be ready to support them so fintechs probably early, and then mainstream financial institutions are coming on board rapidly. Thank you very much.

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

Thanks a lot. Also, I echo a comment that certainly has a new flows aspect or angle here in many of those use cases. And you mentioned MasterCard move. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about how those two will kind of come together, meaning the mechanics of overlaying MasterCard MOVE over some of the capabilities of BBNK.

Yeah. Yeah. So that is indeed a great point and a very kind of short-term opportunity in our view. So today MOVE has billions of endpoints and we can terminate MOVE MOONS that is originated in the U.S. in a bank account, let's say, in the Philippines. What we can't do today is terminate that in a crypto wallet, in crypto assets, or originate from a crypto wallet, from crypto assets. And so by connecting MOV and the DVNK infrastructure, we will be able to do that. So any crypto wallet out there or any wallet out there with any stable coins will be able to send these stable coins, any type of stablecoin on any type of chain and then terminate into any of the termination points that move have or vice versa from any fiat rail into a crypto wallet. So that is really a great initial opportunity. But as I mentioned earlier, to us this is not just about um about that to us this is about uh a an ecosystem that will continue to evolve in a very fragmented way with dozens of chains dozens if not hundreds of of uh coins in different currencies uh with thousands of intermediaries that all have to interoperate that is exactly the kind of role that we want to play, that we have been playing in the fiat world for decades. And that's really where we see the scaling beyond perhaps the more tactical use cases. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Jason Kupferberg from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good morning, guys. Thanks for all this commentary. A really interesting deal here. We've seen that BBNK's volume run rate, I think, is now $25 billion plus. So curious how fast that's growing and just anything you can help us with in terms of rough revenue sizing or profitability of the business. And then maybe if you can just clarify on the revenue model, is it nearly 100% of the revenues are transaction-based or are there any license or SaaS-type fees in there?

Jason, thanks for the question. I mean, right now the deal hasn't closed. we're pretty excited about the announcement so we haven't disclosed any of those financial projections over time you know once the deal close and get through all regulatory etc we will you know look to disclose financials like we do any acquisitions you know over the next 12 months but until then we have not gone into those level of details so more to come on that over time as far as sorry and as far as your question on the monetization the same thing we've gone to level detail but you did touch on how you know predominantly this is volume based i.e digital currency stablecoin etc so bifs on conversion send versus receive etc great thanks our next

question comes from brian keen from city please go ahead your line is open yeah hi good morning um just wanted to follow up any details you can give us on the structure of the deal like how did you think about valuation here was it based on volume or revenues and then on the the 300 million in contingent payments is that volume or revenue or retention just any color on on what those contingencies are thank you yeah thanks brian um you know obviously we we're not going to send our our acquisition model out externally but i think when you think about this right as we look at the standalone on its own and most importantly how we think about the synergies right as bvnk comes and couples with the overall MasterCard, how we bring this to our customers, how we really

scale these solutions, and, you know, even more than that, how this, the market becomes more fragmented, et cetera, as Yarn walked into. So, obviously, for us, it is, you know, we really see a lot of value in bringing these two assets together, more tools to our network, and that all plays into the financial projections as we think about the acquisition itself.

And anything just on those continued payments?

So, yeah, so as I mentioned, you know, the announced acquisition is around $1.8 billion with around $300 million of contingent payments. Each deal is structured differently, you know, and within that there's going to be, you know, certain commitments we want to deliver, you know, obviously within that it's on MasterCard and BB&K working together, we really see that long-term opportunity, so we can't get into specifics, but it's about us continuing to deliver on the agreements we made. Thank you.

Our next question comes from James Fawcett from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you very much. I wanted to ask what your sense is right now in terms of some of the regulatory questions development and some of the use cases and how you are planning to help facilitate and move those forward in a lot of markets. I guess I'm thinking about cases where People are using stablecoins maybe that have some questions about whether that falls inside or outside things like capital flow controls and just trying to think about how MasterCard can take advantage of its presence and relationships to move a lot of those regulations into the future.

Thanks. yeah i i think it's a it's a great point there there are some uh i mean this is an emerging space with emerging regulation and in some markets more mature than others uh i think what is uh what we actually view as a competitive advantage for the space is a very high degree of um compliance with both regulations and with AML and OFAC standards. It is a competitive advantage in the sense that we want to serve banks, regulated banks, that have a very high degree of scrutiny around that. And so as we go to banks and as we demonstrate the fact that we are very close to regulation, that we are very compliant, and frankly, BVNK itself has great tooling and great discipline around that, we think we can be the trusted partner for those banks. At the same time, like you said, as a partner that is present in all these countries, we can engage and are engaged with different regulators in order to advance the agenda and bring greater regulatory clarity as a whole. And this, we find, is a productive dialogue with many countries.

Our next question comes from Adam Frisch from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking the question, and congrats on a really interesting deal. I think to date and probably for the near future, the stacks and traditional payment rails like MasterCard, where there's all different types of traditional rails, and stablecoin have been relatively distinct and separate. And so I'd love for you to dive in. You touched on this a little bit, but maybe get into a little bit more detail about how you see the two stacks, maybe becoming more and more interoperable over time and could we see a credit card transaction today eventually settle over stable coin rails to facilitate faster cheaper back end could that ignite kind of additional services for you guys over time so i'd love for you to address that aspect of it in a little bit more detail and do you think this deal kind of mitigates some of the concern that some people may have that mastercard is going to be disintermediated by the stablecoin ecosystem in the future thank you yeah great question thank you for that um and and um you're right uh the the two uh the two have uh uh been viewed as quite separate and

the reason for that is because the card rail or the card network is essentially a messaging network or think of it a front-end, a UX, whereby consumers get a card or a digital credential, a merchant get a terminal or a virtual terminal, and that facilitates the exchange of information, credential information, payload information between two parties. Once that exchange of information has been done, then you need to settle. Today, the card network settles on fiat rails, on ACH rails, and that is why sometimes that takes a little while. If you do a cross-border transfer, you need to settle in two different countries and need to use correspondent rails in order to move the funds, and so settlement happens one or two days after the messaging layer, after the card transaction has happened. where the two can come together is where we can say actually with stable coins we can accelerate that settlement we can actually move money much faster the messaging layer doesn't change the consumer and the merchants still need to interact with each other through a ux still need to have rules of the road in order to bright protections we still need the reach and the highly standardized way in which these two players interact, but you can actually move the funds faster by plugging in stablecoins from the back. We've started doing this, actually. We already have a number of stablecoin currencies enabled in the network. We've already been moving funds, and that obviously reduces trapped liquidity. That reduces the collateral requirements that customers have. And so we see significant benefits to accelerate settlement, even for the card network. But where the misnomer often goes is that it actually doesn't impact the messaging layer between consumers and merchants. And that's why we remain really quite confident about this being a net additive deal for the network and not a replacement. I think we're out of time, but maybe we can speed up one last question.

Our last question will come from Craig Moore from ST Partners. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yeah, hi. Thanks for the question. I was wondering if there are any additional capabilities that MasterCard might need to add to support this ecosystem over time, whether that's a stronger digital identity capability or something else that would be needed by the ecosystem to create confidence in the transaction.

Yeah, so we've been very thoughtful about this acquisition, both in terms of timing and in terms of the capabilities that we felt we need at this point in order to take full advantage of the step change in this case. Does that mean that we have all assets? Does that mean that we will never need something else? Obviously not. and we will continue to look to to build to partner and potentially to buy as we as we feel other other gaps still exist but once we close i i do believe um the the capabilities of bvmk and the talent that is there that will help us develop new capabilities is really quite impressive and will allow us to to to take great strides in the space that's a perfect way to end thank you thank Thank you, Jorn.

Thank you, everyone. Please reach out if there's any further questions. Thank you.

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