Devin explains how Mastercard’s varied revenue streams, many operating seamlessly behind the scenes, have propelled the company to achieve a $9 trillion global payment volume. He also shared insights into Mastercard’s strategies for scaling in an increasingly digital financial world and cashless society.
In this article we provide highlights from the podcast. You can listen to the full podcast from the link provided below.
Listen to the full podcast here: https://magellan.podbean.com/e/mastering-the-world- of-payments/
Recorded on 8 March 2024
How has the landscape changed over the last decade?
Devin Corr: If you just look at even the last 10 years, the evolution we’ve had, it’s really about diversification. And what I mean there is right now, we’re in 210 countries and territories across the globe. Our revenue is around 70% outside of North America, so we are truly global, truly local.
Along that journey, if you take it in buckets, one from a product perspective, we started off predominantly credit. Today we offer credit, debit, prepaid and commercial products, we’re very diversified. From a services’ perspective, we started off with some card benefits, some consulting, some marketing. Today we offer AI-powered, best-in-class fraud solutions. We offer personalisation solutions, we offer AI-powered data insights and analytics like benchmarking tools. Just from a numbers’ perspective, if we think about that, we’ve gone from what was about mid-teens percent of our services in 2012 to about a third of our revenue coming from services.
It’s been a huge growth driver for us, and one we’re really invested in because it brings differentiation, diversification. When you think about payments itself, obviously cards are a preferred form of payment, but we’ve added areas like account-to-account, real- time payment and blockchain. So really why have we done all this? It diversifies our revenue, it makes us more resilient, as you think about the economic cycles and over time. At the end of the day, it positions us very well for the long-term in general, so 10 years, 50 years is a long time, but we continue to innovate and we have to keep doing so to make sure we maintain the growth that we’ve continued to deliver to you over time.
I think it’s also very much embedded in our strategy. All of this, even the evolution falls into just continue to execute on expanding in payments, extending our services and embracing new networks. And if we continue to sit underneath that and grow in the right way, we can continue to see a long future ahead.
Why is network effect so valuable and how has it enabled you to generate attractive returns?
Devin Corr: MasterCard operates one of the fastest and most secure payment networks in the world. I’m happy to be able to say that we’re focused on delivering a network that provides customers and cardholders with a convenient, secure way to pay anytime and anywhere.
payment,” right? But our brand and the network itself matters, the fact that you believe you can make that transaction. The merchant knows that they’ll get paid at the same time so you can walk out with that pair of shoes or whatever it might be that you have in your hand.