Mastercard Incorporated (MA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. I'm Madhu Namburi. I run our technology investment banking. And it is absolutely my honor and pleasure to introduce both Ajay Banga and Michael Miebach from Mastercard today. A couple of stats before I pass it on to Tien-Tsin. Ajay took over as the CEO in 2010 and has one of the most unprecedented run and one of the successful in all of Corporate America. He took the revenues just over $5 billion to $17 billion, growing almost 30%. It's an investor conference, so it'll be remiss not for me to flag, the stock price under his leadership grew about 14x compared to just over 3x for S&P. So one of, as I said, a poster child success story in all of Corporate America. Michael, no pressure, as you take over in January as a successor to Ajay. But what maybe some of you guys realized, Michael has been actually with the company for quite a while. In 2010, he started as the President for Middle East and Africa and became Chief Product Officer. And I think some of you guys already probably know that Michael is also the brainchild behind some of very successful acquisitions this company has done, like Vocalink and so forth. I'm sure, Michael, you will be fantastic and terrific. With no further ado, let me pass it over to Tien-Tsin. Again, thank you for both of you for making time to do this.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you, Madhu. Hello, Ajay. Hello, Michael. Thanks for doing this, guys. Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I know it's a busy time. I was really excited to see you both. So we're going to do a fireside chat, if that's okay, like we've done in the past. And we'll have the audience also ask questions using the Q&A button here. So feel free to ask questions through that channel, and I'll do my best to check that as we go along. But again, welcome. Thanks so much for the time.

So I thought we'd just kick it off with the obligatory sort of COVID-19 question. Another macro environment is changing quite a bit, and both of you have a great view on what's going on with the macro. Can you speak to what you're seeing on the ground? And is there a path to recovery that you see? What might that look like?

So Tien-Tsin, first of all, I think, well, to add to Madhu's comment, yours was the first investor meeting I went to after I joined the company. And I still remember that. You were about to have another child. And I was pulling your leg over how many kids you were planning to have. And it's 10 years forward, and you're probably one of the last big investor meetings I'm going to do in this role. So I think there's some point and justice in that, right? But it's nice to see you.

Let me stop you right there. I remember that very well. I remember you saying that you'd do this job about 10 years. You were true to that. And so I've been using my son's birthdays as a marker for that. Look, I've learned a ton from you, and it's been a fun ride, for sure. So I appreciate you doing this with us, seriously.

Not at all. So to your question, let me give you the answer in 2 parts. The first part is more about what I'm seeing in macro trends, and we get that out of the way a little bit. We did publish some new numbers last evening, which we promised to do on the earnings call, if you remember, which would give you all a sense of how transactions were proceeding over the course of the weeks between the last time we spoke to you and last evening. And essentially, if you put it all together, every week in March was slower than the prior week. We entered April, therefore, at the bottom of that run of March. The first 2 weeks of April were like the last week of March, broadly. Okay. I do that at a very high level. The next 2 weeks of April were an improvement over the first 2 weeks. So the latter fortnight was better. And what you're seeing is that improving trend has sustained itself through the first 2 weeks of May. Essentially the data that we put out there, it is true across the world. There seems to be a bigger bounce in the United States right now than there is in the rest of the world, and you can speculate why that is. And probably part of it is something to do with stimulus checks in addition to the beginnings of reopening. But essentially, that's the way the numbers are looking for transactions. Now our services business, which has got some elements of it that are connected to transactions and some elements of it that are separate and can be kind of independent in their growth, and that showed in the first quarter, I think you will continue to see that over the course of the year that our services lines of businesses do give us some diversification in that system. Having said that, the second quarter is still an ugly quarter, right? Let's not get to forget that the world is in a very different place today than we were during the average of the first quarter. You got to remember the exit of March and then think through how the second quarter is looking. It's looking better than the exit of March, but it's still not looking like what life used to be like. So back to our -- the bigger picture. If you remember, there's a lot -- first of all, there's a lot of health policy, fiscal policy, monetary policy going in, that we all know about. What we did talk about in the earnings call was the 4 phases of containment, stabilization, normalization and growth. And I think I said that we're in the stabilization phase in the U.S. and Europe at the time of the earnings call. I would tell you it feels like they're beginning to enter into the early stages of what we had called normalization, which if you remember is not really a normalization. It's just coming off the bottom of the fall that happened when containment and stabilization came in. I see normalization not as a sharp incline. I see it as a gradual improvement, some sectors improving quicker and better than others. Obvious things like mass entertainment and travel, cross-border in particular, while long distance, in particular, would be slower. We are seeing intra-regional travel like in Europe or even domestic travel in China. And now China is beginning to talk certain corridors, like China and South Korea, where business people are now coming in again. That kind of thing you can begin to see. So think of normalization as a somewhat longer-term incline. And then growth would be when we get back to pre-COVID levels. And my belief at the macro level is we're going to need a vaccine for people to get back to the level of confidence that's implied in a pre-COVID world. A vaccine does not have to be 100% effective. None of our vaccines used to be, but a vaccine that allows people to feel confident. And if you also get a therapeutic earlier, sometime later this year, as people say, then I think you get 2 injections of confidence for consumers and businesses, which could change the trajectory of these 4 phases. But otherwise, broadly, we think of the growth phase as something towards the second part of next year. And we think of normalization as something that's beginning but would carry on for the next 2, 3 quarters at a gradual pace. And Tien-Tsin, most importantly, this is not linear, as we've seen in Singapore and Japan. They did step a little backwards. So I guess my point here is that we've got these 4 phases. Michael is running the company and its businesses and revenue and expenses with me in a way that is oriented towards these 4 phases. We see the beginnings of normalization, but there's a long way to go there. We can see the early spending patterns that are showing up in some of those categories, and we can go into that if you want later, but that's broadly where we are.

No, that's great. No, that's great. I think we do need some patience here. But how are you running the business differently than given everything you just said there, Ajay, for all stakeholders, for your employees, for clients and also for shareholders, your ability to protect the bottom line but also invest what -- in what I see is a lot of new opportunities that could help Mastercard? Give your thoughts there.

Yes, sure. I'm going to let Michael answer a little bit of that because that's really what he's going to be dealing with for the next decade. But I'll burst out the first part. Let's start with the employees. Because to me, and I said this in an interview yesterday, at the end of the day, the employees are my engine in this company. And their creativity, their diversity, their ideas are our fuel. If we manage it well, if we nurture it well, that engine and fuel, it gives us the ability to go at the best possible speed we can. And I think what we've tried to do over the past decade is to invest in making those employees feel that we're always there with them, and we will be pushing them. We are competitive. We are paranoid about being competitive. We have a sense of urgency and a desire to be innovative. But we will be fair and transparent and always let them feel that our hand is on their back and not in their face. That has been the policy from the date this virus came through from how we are dealing with them. They are working from home. As you know, 90-plus percent of our employees are working from home. And we've got them -- we've given them better medical benefits at this period. During this period, in fact, just to prove we care about them, we've even gone and announced that male and female employees in our company will be entitled to the same 16 weeks of maternity leave or paternity leave in the middle of this whole period because we're trying to show them that we care about you as people, but then we demand. And we demand that we do the best we can to win with customers, with governments, the whole lot. I think that's what Michael can walk you through, how we're trying to run the company for these phases. And I think he's doing some incredible work in that space.

Yes. So Ajay, you gave the analogy of the engine. So let me just talk about the road on which this car is driving. The road is our network. So the first thing that we've made sure we do is full focus on resilience, all-time up. So our system is running without missing a beat. That's super important for our customers, for governments and everybody else around us. Now motivated employees, they engage in -- with our customers in a very different way. So leaning in, not pushing product, but truly being connected and understanding and anticipating the needs in a changing time for our customers has been absolutely important. It works really well. We're starting to have dialogues of very different kind than we had before. So leaning in at scale is also important. You're running multiple thousand peoples on this conference. We're starting to run webinars and all sorts of other things. So the whole way of engaging is also entirely different than it was before. Now when it comes to leaning in, what really happens right now is everybody is having the same ask. How is this impacting my ecosystem? How is it impacting my competitive landscape? How is it impacting my business? Every merchant is asking that. Every issuer is asking that. Every government is asking that. So here, when I think about our lineup of services, particularly in data analytics space, we can answer -- or we can help those answer those questions. That is assess the crisis, your plan for what possible answers might be and then execute against that. So on the data analytics side, that's where a lot of the focus of these conversations go. The other is we're all seeing a massive shift towards digital. Our lives are all more digital, and that obviously impacts us positively straightaway. But from a customer perspective, from an end-user perspective, it raises questions on, am I familiar with the use case? Should I be worried about cyber risks and all of that? So the other line of focus here in terms of services is cyber risk and cyber risk management. So the leaning in is really predominantly on these 2 aspects. But then when it comes to everything digital, how do we get the engine going on the digital side, higher approval rates and all those things? Those are immediate areas of focus throughout the stabilization phase into the normalization phase. But if you do all of this, there are customers who are already asking, so what about the next 2 years out? What are we going to do beyond that? What matters even more so in the future that might be some new normal post-COVID? So we see some really focused conversation on accelerating even modernization of payment infrastructure, for example, the real-time payment space. So those are things that we're containing. So it's not just short-term crisis focus, it's long-term stuff. And that is across issuers, merchants and governments. On the government side, quite interesting. There's a particular crisis need here as governments are trying to engage their citizens, trying to get money into their hands so they can get the economy restarted. So disbursements, stimuli packages, we have engagements across every single continent other than Antarctica, I should add. But I'm just looking at the latest list. As of last night, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Chile, Czech Republic, Israel, Philippines, Thailand, and of course, we're big in the U.S. with Direct Express. So the government engagement is like on a very high velocity here. You asked about bottom line and expense management. So with everything that I've just said is, the first is resilience of the network and making sure our services can perform to the level that is needed right now. We went through our expense management framework at the outset of the crisis, flexible approach, basically keeping the long term in mind. But the guiding principles are simply customer demand and market readiness. I don't need to continue to invest in something that the market is just not really interested in right now. Travel benefits is not something -- or marketing campaigns around travel is not something that we will do. So there's obvious flexibility, and we put a framework out that allows us to react quite -- in a quite agile fashion. So the real focus is digital services, geographic expansion, long-term investments into things like open banking, we'll try to protect and run it for the long term.

One very interesting thing, Tien-Tsin, that I would add to that is we just put out this announcement a couple of days back about the actual launch of our B2B track payment service in the United States. And the reason we're doing that is, yes, right now, B2B total shipments are down because supply chains are where they are. But just for those who are shipping, there's no way they're going into buildings to write checks and send them. And so their desire -- it's almost like a catalytic event which is forcing them into thinking about engaging with the digital service on this. And clearly, coming out of this into the growth phase, there's going to be a nice boost to this. So we're actually off and running. And we've got it launched with a bunch of partners and suppliers or the issuer or the buyer side as well as the supplier side. And hopefully, we'll get that going with multi-rails, so right now, it's card rails. It goes into the testing of real-time payment as we speak. It's going into a number of continents. And by the end of this year, we should come out of this in a much better place than our B2B payment service.

Yes. And on B2B, I've been hearing like a lot of these SMEs or even larger companies, they can't get to the post office box. They can't pick up checks. A lot of change is coming on, on the ground. So maybe I'd love to hear from you both. In your minds, what trends are you seeing now that will stay with us in a post-COVID world or that actually might accelerate some of the secular trends that we've seen for so many years here? What are you watching for here that might accelerate?

I mean at the obvious top of the house level, it is clear that the slower decline in the use of cash globally that we've been seeing because some countries were faster, some were slower. And the slower countries were actually growing their PCE faster at one time. So the weighted average math, Tien-Tsin, is to bring us back to a relatively slow decline across the world. I think that has changed. Now my belief is some extent of that change will remain post-COVID because the realization has struck home to people of the challenges of dealing with cash. And I think while it was a joke in the past that cash is dirty, there is now a real speculation. Then why would I want to deal with that? So I think you're going to get some change in the secular momentum behind the migration away from cash at PCE level. There are things about cash that don't change. Tax avoidance in certain markets, the fungibility of it, those are things that are still headwinds. But I think the tailwind does -- has changed. Contactless transactions, as you know, are up tremendously in the last couple of quarters. Even in the United States, that was the slowest to take this and run with it. I mean Canada and Europe and Eastern Europe and Australia were running for the last decade. The U.S. is just beginning to play there in a hard way. So I would say cash, the secular change, contactless, whether through a card or through one of the Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay kind of phone utilizations, I can see a real change there. The second one to me is the way you would use e-commerce. Categories of things that whether -- irrespective of your generation, irrespective of your economic system, there are some things that people have learned to shop online during this crisis because of the necessity of living your life. And I think that, I don't suspect will go right back to where it used to be. I'm certain there is the joy of physical shopping that consumers feel that will come back to an extent. But everyday groceries or things of that nature or online learning or digital gaming, things that we have seen move up the incline faster in the last couple of months, I got a feel like that is a trend that isn't going back even in more conservative markets and countries. In Germany, where Michael is from, where they were resistant to a number of these, he would tell you there are aspects of German life that have changed quite dramatically. And so I think that some of that would stay with us, Tien-Tsin. The work-from-home angle is the more controversial one. Right now, if you talk to an employee, as we are doing right now with you, you've got a higher attendance than you would otherwise have got at a location. But the fact is physical and personal interaction has certain very strong benefits in terms of driving innovation, creativity and the conversations that lead to a certain kind of dynamism in a place. And I believe that, therefore, a more healthy mix of working from home and working in an office will come back. I think human beings will revert to a mean. That mean may be advanced compared to where it was, but I don't think it will be where we are today. But for that, people have to feel safer and more secure and going back to work and using public transit and stuff of that type. So I think there's a stairway there that we'll have to climb, but I can see that kind of coming back. The real -- and I think on travel and mass entertainment, my belief has been right from the beginning. Michael and I were discussing this 2 months ago, intra-regional travel, domestic travel, travel in certain corridors, you should expect to see that come back faster than you should expect to see long-distance, transatlantic, cross-border kind of travel. I just think that's going to be the case. You can speculate whether business travel will come back before personal travel. I don't know the answer to that. But I do believe that the kind of distances you travel, road -- and already, you can see it in hotel bookings for weekends, it's beginning. But it's where you can drive to. It's for their indulgence today. That will evolve over the next few months.

No, I agree. I'm just hoping that there'll be a football season at this point.

By the way, yesterday, I learned something very interesting. I forgot to tell you that. Our concierge services for our upmarket cards that we provide and we give people a range of benefits through that, obviously, benefits right now required are different. One of the benefits we're offering in a number of our regions is telemedicine, access to telemedicine services. And the response is incredible. So I think companies have to be flexible and look at what people want, which is what I think Michael is driving. But within this, there are all these opportunities that I think will change the secular trend in our industry. And of course, B2B, I just told you what I thought. People are not going anywhere to pick up checks. They're already suddenly realizing the value of electronic presentment of bills and invoicing and having a choice of how to get your payment done factored or paid in advance and so on. So it's a very different conversation right now. The acquisition of Transactis, and we were talking to the Transactis guy, it's exactly a year today. Actually, Michael is going to attend his cocktail -- his virtual cocktail today. Their business in the last 2 months has benefited enormously from this realization of businesses and our bill payments and invoices.

Two things to add. That was a very comprehensive list. I can still think of 2 things to add, and 1 is here's a more complex world. We have engaged with a range of customers, different verticals, who are all getting hooked on data analytics and saying, wow, there's so much more to understand. Let's move beyond the obvious. Let's find another angle. So I see a lot of demand for services, data analytics and cyber coming out of this. And the other is I gave you this long list of government engagement. What we're finding is that governments are realizing they can't reach all their citizens. So this disbursement question is starting to raise questions in the mind of governments, banking associations, central banks on, is my payment stack in my country modernized enough to deal with what today's world requires? And here is a conversation where we find ourselves with the multi-rail capabilities and say, we can have this conversation with you. What do you want to do? Here's the choice that we can bring to you. I believe there's going to be a lot more involvement. More like looking at the electrical grid and the water infrastructure, I think payments are going to be critical infrastructure in countries going forward.

Yes. Now you're doing some important stuff. We shouldn't take that for granted. Let's drill into e-comm and digital. I'm seeing some -- a lot of questions come through here on the digital side. How well positioned is Mastercard on e-commerce? I know you're doing some things around SRC. You have Simplify Commerce. Talk to us about your e-comm positioning. I think on the call, you mentioned 50% of volume was card-not-present in the month of April. So can you expand on that?

Yes. So 50%, which was up from 40%, so that's a significant increase. So lives are more digital. We talked about all those trends there. So when you think about what's going on is a couple of things. We've laid the pipes for powering the digital ecosystem over the last couple of years. Tokenization has a foundational capability. So when I look around the world today, what we have is, on the tokenization side, over 2,500 issuers as partners. We're looking at 60-plus countries there, so real reach. That drives approval rates. That, again, drives a better experience. That, again, as people come into the system who are new users, who are getting used to new use cases, all of that creates this virtuous circle, which is fantastic. Now that requires that, on the other hand, you do have actually people that provide the acceptance. So on the acceptance side, yes, there's tokenization for merchants about sales generally, the roll-out of Click to Pay in the United States. We're making good progress there. There's a whole set of payment facilitators, processors that we're partnering with to really get scale beyond going merchant by merchant. We had good progress with some very big individual merchants like Saks and so forth. But when I look at Worldpay, when I look at people like Klarna and so forth, so there's a whole set of facilities...

Braintree.

Braintree. There's a whole list that we put out in the earnings call, and there is a lot more momentum since. So that is our good foundational capability. Powering SRC, SRC itself, SRC merchants and the acceptance there is looking good. What I'm particularly excited about is looking ahead into the month of June. Around about midyear, we're in conversations with Citi for push provisioning at scale and a range of other banks. So here, the chicken-and-egg question, I think, is starting to be answered that, that is -- it's a better experience. It's a simpler experience. It makes sense for merchants and for banks. So I believe the path to scale is looking promising on that. One other thing that's important when it comes to being positioned well in e-commerce is, is there enough tools around the world in the hands of individual consumers to actually participate? So our whole push for financial inclusion is absolutely critical in that we just put out a commitment to add another 500 million people that we will pull into the formal financial system. So that's an important part of the work. And then I can't help myself but come back to Germany for a moment. So here is a cash-oriented economy. There's a lot of cards out there that are not e-commerce enabled, and that's just one country. There's many others around the world. So making great progress on digital-first cards. So that is instant issuance. If you have a card that doesn't happen to work online, Mastercard can help you get online anyway with digital-first issuance. You saw the success of Apple Card, which is a digital-first product, and we have many more of those around the world. 20 million German corporate cards are actually in that space. So on all angles, I think we're well positioned. What helps in all of this is a strong position in fintechs. We've been leading in fintechs for years. We're building out that across all types of fintechs, be it neobanks, be it large digital giants or the whole range of emerging fintechs with our Start Path program. All that is helping us to bring capabilities into the world of our issuers and the consumers of serving much better use cases because we're tying them into our network and delivering through our network.

Yes. So you mentioned a lot there. You mentioned tokens and the growth of fintechs, which issue a lot of virtual cards. So what happens to the plastic card in your payment?

You asked me that question 10 years ago as well, young man.

He didn't say 10 years ago. Actually, the answer is different.

I think it's a relevant question. It's a relevant question every time because I think the card is a form factor, and it's a useful form factor because it's delivered a lot over the years. Even now, Tien-Tsin, if you look at people at a train station turnstile in the U.K., for example, at the London Tube, and you watch how many tap a card to enter versus how many use contactless on a phone to enter, you will find that it's a higher multiple. It's twice as many with card than with the phone. And I think that's because of the ease and familiarity of using it. But I believe that form factors are going to keep increasing. And I think with 5G, the advent of every device becoming a possible device of commerce, and with oral commerce, I can see many different ways in which this will get enabled. One of the reasons why we spent so much effort on the oral brand, we're actually winning awards now for being -- we actually -- we displaced McDonald's as the best oral brand recently, is that I believe that oral commerce, commerce through devices, these will be a long-term trend of the next decade, during Michael's time as CEO. And therefore, positioning ourselves for it now for the result, we'll get 5, 8 years down the road, is really important. So I think the card is there. It will still have a pretty strong share, but you will see the advent of all these alternative ways, particularly with 5G.

Great. So I know we're almost running out of time here. Just want to make sure we hit some of these other topics. So open banking, you sort of alluded to it there, Ajay and Michael, earlier. You guys mentioned a win with Tesco, I think, on the earnings call. I think that was with some of the other pandemic questions. So what -- how important is open banking as a theme in your mind? And same question, how is Mastercard positioned?

Sure. Michael?

Yes. So I look at open banking, we look at open banking as a global opportunity. So it plays out in different ways around the world. But the whole idea of giving a consumer the opportunity to open up access to their bank account is something that took hold. People want to use the data that is in their bank accounts to get better offers on lending or whatever they might want to do. So that's the starting point here. Global opportunity plays out in different ways. In Europe, of course, the access is regulated. PSD2 and all of that works in a particular way. In other countries, it might be very individual driven by market needs. The United States would be an example like that. Now we started to invest in open banking, get going a few years back. Last year, we launched a set of solutions in Europe. The whole idea is if you got -- a consumer has a bank account holder, who has a bilateral relationship with their bank, that's all fantastic. And now there's all these third parties coming in. The consumer gives consent. And there's thousands of third parties, thousands of banks and thousands of consumers, it's potentially a mess. There is not a regulated trusted party in the middle and multilateral network that can facilitate these transactions and ensure that data management principles and other things are adhered to. That's the role that we're seeking. And I believe open banking is not going to actually work out without such principles in the middle and trusted parties that can facilitate the data transactions as well as the payment transactions. So that's what our platform does. It connects people, connect, protect and resolve. So it starts with connect. It helps if you're in multi-rail because we can connect through one API into multiple payment options. Beyond connect, you want to know who you deal with on the other hand. So content management, the consumers change their mind. Other fintech is actually fraudulent. So the whole compliance aspect of making sure this is an ecosystem, just as we do in cards, where we look out and say, these are all good players.

Consent on all sides. Consent from the bank, consent with the fintech, consent from the consumer. I actually think you can get -- you can be in a hurry to get this done any other way. But the right way will be, eventually, you need all 3 parties to be consenting players in this game.

Exactly.

This is not a free-for-all. Banking is not a free for all. It's people's money involved. And so it's got to be done the right way.

So that's the protect part, protecting the ecosystem and all 3 constituents in it. And there is another aspect. We brought huge value into the world of cards by allowing people to dispute transactions that are not really...

Resolved.

Delivering on what is actually addressed. So there's a resolve aspect of the platform, which is basically dispute management. All that, I think, we're well positioned to do. We're in 11-plus countries, 1,800 connections. We have strong data management principles and practices. So that puts us as a trusted party in a space that -- in a market that is probably the leading PSD2 land open banking market, the U.K., they started in 2018 over there, that Tesco, High Street bank, comes to us and say, we want to work with you on that. So that's exciting. As we look around the world, we're asking -- it's a global trend. We want to accelerate our efforts in open banking. So we are looking at organic, inorganic ways to further accelerate and make sure that we stay ahead. But we are in the market, we are in a market over a year now with our platform, and that's going really well.

But it's going to be with these principles, Tien-Tsin, of connect, protect, resolve, which includes consent, which includes the idea of doing it with everybody being part of it, banks, fintechs and the consumer.

And the preference in all of this will be, the mission: API connections. There's different ways to access bank accounts. We believe that's the way to do it. We also realized that we've got to work with all parties. Fintechs are pretty okay on that.

They're nimble.

But there's a path with banks where we need to help banks to get there and make sure it is in the end API-based and permissions, so you don't have to run around with user credentials and things like that.

No. I like that framework. I wish you had more time to dig into it. I love that kind of stuff, but we're running short on time. So maybe we'll wrap it up a little bit here and ask Ajay a couple of questions. Just -- you've been here, what, 10-plus years. You started out dealing with Durbin, which wasn't fun. And you're exiting here like -- what would you call out as some of the bigger changes that maybe we don't fully appreciate? That's the first part. And then secondly, I remember very well, you said that finding a successor will be very, very important. So what can you tell us about Michael and why he's the right person to take over at Mastercard?

I was telling Madhu jokingly in the beginning, I like social distancing. I can keep him a little bit away from me. But to your first question, the 2 or 3 biggest changes at Mastercard, I have seen in the decade. The first one is how much services and the different lines inside services have changed the profile of our company, have changed the dialogue that we have with clients and governments and merchants and fintechs, and have changed the culture of the people who sit at the table every time in our company. Because now you have people with AI backgrounds, people with cybersecurity backgrounds, people who are deeply versed in data analytics, in the management of data, in the principles around the management of data. You heard Michael talk about data management principles twice or thrice in open banking. I think that is our competitive advantage. We have a set of principles. We are publicly in the market with them. We care about the privacy of our consumers built into our DNA today. And I think that aspect of what services has done to our company, diversified our revenue, given us something that's not directly connected only to the way transactions is built. It's built off transactions, but the revenue profile does not only depend on the trajectory of our transaction. I think that's the important point here. The second one is multi-rail. I am completely convinced that offering card, instant payments, ACH-based, blockchain-based, those companies that partner with others, whether they are banks or nonbanks or merchants or fintechs or governments, who can provide you with the expertise and thinking in one location of the alternatives you have to make your life better, those companies will be the leaders of the next decade in this system. Governments are more and more inclined towards ensuring that choice is available across the spectrum, be it to businesses and to consumers. And I think we want to be clear that, that is a place we have carved out, and that is a place we will work very hard on. During this entire period, the one place Michael is going full tilt on remains the implementation of real-time capabilities and the infrastructure in the RFPs that we are winning around the world. You will see us going full tilt on that. That's the second one. I think the third aspect, which very often gets lost in all this, is the spirit of innovation inside the company, Tien-Tsin. We were -- 10 years ago, we had 3 people in the company dedicated to digital and mobile payments: 3 -- from a 5, 2. That left one, who's also gone since then for other reasons, right? Today, 54% of our company works on something to do with digital directly. So just to be clear, our workforce has expanded 400% in that period. We've gone from 3 people to 54% of the company, and they're global. They're all over the world. They're not just in the United States. We have large centers in Australia, in Dublin, in India, in Frankfurt, in Paris, in Singapore. And that is what makes our company who we are. And this connects to Michael. The first thing the Board looked for in the succession process, which we've been doing -- from the year I became CEO, I would sit to the Board every year in December and describe the nature of the next CEO, what kind of person. Characteristic number one: global citizen with a deep respect for local thinking, as in glocal, truly. Michael's background, his growth, his experiences, his living spaces, the banks he's worked with, the jobs he's done are spread across the world. That is the kind of person we need. That's our future. We are a global company headquartered in the United States. We needed a global citizen headquartered in the U.S., but who understands deeply what it's like to work locally. In addition to his good looks and his knowledge of payments and his banking and the fact that he's German and all that good stuff, but that's -- I would tell you that's the first thing. The second part is not just real-time payments. Our push into financial inclusion started in Michael's old region, Middle East, Africa. He started it in South Africa. We took it global. I believe financial inclusion and coming out of this crisis, inclusion will be even more important because you can see the statistics of who is more impacted by the crisis. And so I think we have a competitive advantage in the kind of individual who will be leading this company for the next decade.

No, that's terrific. I think we're out of time. We've got plenty...

I don't know what to add to that. I agree.

I look forward to working with you, Ajay. Like I said, I've learned a ton from you and I agree with everything you've said. And you've been an important piece to the whole industry and of Mastercard on top of that. So Madhu, do you have any closing thoughts here?

No. Thank you so much, Ajay and Michael. And Michael, looking forward working with you as well.

Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Yes. Thank you very much.

Thanks again. Next time, I'll see you.