Mastercard Incorporated (MA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. I'm Jason Kupferberg, the payments and IT services analyst here at Bank of America. Welcome to day 2 of our Electronic Payment Symposium. We're very excited to have Mastercard with us for a fireside chat. And specifically, we have Raj Seshadri, and she runs the Data & Services business.

So I thought it would be helpful, maybe just tell us a little bit about your time at Mastercard, to start, and the roles that you've had. And then just tell us a little bit about what Data & Services is, really, and your strategy is for this business unit.

Great. And thank you for inviting me, Jason. It's great to be here. So I've been at Mastercard now for 5 years. I spent the first 4 in our North America business, working with U.S. banks, all the different banks, from the largest ones down to the smallest ones, the whole range of them. And then 1 year ago, last January, I moved from that business to run our global Data & Services business. So in answer to your question around Data & Services, it is part of our services franchise. Our services franchise, as you know, has data and services. It has cybersecurity and intelligence, and it has some services like processing that are also included. It's a very large portion of our business. Last year, it was about roughly 1/3 of our revenues, and it's also very high growth. Even last year, in the midst of the pandemic, it grew in the high teens, around 18%. So D&S is part of that services franchise. D&S, itself, it has a very rich legacy that goes back. The track record is over several decades. It is things that we've both built organically as well as some acquisitions that we've made to expand the franchise. And the -- underlying all of it is it's a set of services that differentiates Mastercard, and it also diversifies Mastercard. So what I mean by that is it insulates us from some of the core driver fluctuations that we see, and that's been very visible over the last year. And I'll tell you, even in my years in NAM, the 4 years I spent in North America working with the U.S. banks, D&S is -- plays a critical role in working with the banks to catalyze growth, their growth as well as our growth. And so it's a business that I was very familiar with and quite excited to lead when I stepped into this role 1 year ago. The -- our strategy is relatively simple. It is the overarching view that we -- philosophy that we embrace is to help our partners, banks, merchants, other verticals, government partners, make smarter decisions for better outcomes, both as they run their own businesses as well as they work with their consumers. So we are a B2B2C business, so we help them interact with their -- engage their consumers. And we do this both by embedding it into all of Mastercard. So we work on everything from our flips, to growing portfolios, to optimization, to thinking through the impact of COVID, a range of things that are very core to the Mastercard business. And then we also help extend Mastercard into -- in a new product areas like some of our software platforms, some that we bought, some that we've built; into things like new customer segments like CPGs, fintechs. I mentioned governments before, so really expand our customer footprint. And then actually, like everything in Mastercard, there's also a component -- there's a force for good component. So we work with a number of SMEs in recovery-focused areas, things in that nature as well. But the -- yes, go ahead.

No, it's okay. Please finish your thought.

No. I was going to say the approach that we have is we have a number of capabilities, and we combine them to create solutions. So we really start with the customer and end with the customer. The customer is at the center. So we look at what challenges they have or what they're trying to do, what opportunity they're trying to capture. And we use a very simple framework to approach it, which is discover, recommend, act and improve. It's a 4-step framework, and it applies to a number of different situations. So in discover, we think about the challenge the customer has and think about the data we have, the data the customer has in a relevant third-party data that we can bring in and combine, of course, abiding by our data principles. We are very strict about the data governance and principles that we have around how we treat data. And then recommend is more about teasing up the insights to figure out what should be done. And this is where some of our services around analytics, consulting services, some of our innovative services -- innovation services play a role. Then the act step is to actually do it, and this we do -- it's customer choice based. So if a customer wants to take the insight and do it on their own, that's great. If the customer wants us to help them or have us do it for them, that's great, too, as long as we collectively together partner to act on some of the insights that we generate. And then things like our managed services business, our loyalty business play a role. Consulting, again, plays a role. And then improve is we're very systematic about measurement, tracking, trying to understand what more we can do. The things like our Test & Learn platform play a role there. So our capabilities play a role in different ways in each of these steps. But at the end of the day, it's about a solution for a particular customer problem. That's our approach.

So what's the cleanest way to sort of break down D&S into its various subsegments? I know you kind of mentioned a couple, but I want to make sure we have kind of the right mental model of how D&S breaks down. And then what are kind of the economic models behind each of those subsegments? How do you get paid for those offerings?

Yes. That's a great question. The -- when I think about D&S, we have a very unique set of service capabilities within D&S. It is a curated set. And like I said before, it differentiates us. It diversifies us, and we continue to add to it. So the components of subsegments or the pieces of it underneath are -- include things like our -- we have an unrivaled depth and breadth of insights, and that comes from -- it starts back in the 1990s when our forefathers here collected the data, gathered it, cleansed it, housed it, hire data analysts to work on it. And today, we really have a truly unique franchise in terms of data analytics. It includes our global consulting firm, which was built again over the same period. It is a consulting firm focused on payments and things that are adjacent to payments, including data, a very unique capability. We have things like managed services, which the history of that is it started with helping our issuers drop direct mail to acquire customers and drop direct mail to engage them more. Today, it is a data-driven, digital, performance-based marketing capability. Loyalty, which, like at other networks, started with benefits and insurances on affluent cards. But today, it's way beyond that for us. We have a proprietary platform that does -- very quickly, we can spin up a pay with rewards promotion or cash-back promotion. We have -- we've made acquisitions. Our most recent one is SessionM in the merchant loyalty space. But historically, we also bought Truaxis and Pinpoint. We have a global partner network that we source benefits and attractive offers from at scale with which we can then distribute given our network. And then we have other components like our software platforms, this -- the Mastercard Intelligence Center that we built. This Test & Learn that came with our APT acquisition, so several software platforms. And then we have actually, most recently, our Economics Institute, which we stood up last January prepandemic. And as you see here, the timing could not have been better because we've always had spending pulse for many, many years which takes our Mastercard data, extrapolates it to all card payments and all tender types, including cash, coin, check, to then forecast what consumer spend looks like by geography, by sector. So we were able to speed it out getting to more markets, bring macroeconomic perspectives to it by combining it with other data sources. And that Economics Institute in the pandemic has been extremely important to everything that we do with our partners. It's helped a number of our partners assess, react and recover, hopefully recover fully, from the pandemic in that -- and it's also increased our segment footprint. So it's helped us serve our merchants and banks, of course, but it's also helped us serve new merchant verticals, helped us serve governments of all types, central banks, federal government, state government, cities. It's really increased the footprint of our customer base. So a variety of different components like that, that gives you a flavor for it. And then you asked about the economic model. There's no single economic model. Each -- there are a variety of models, and each service has a -- actually, each service is distributed through a variety of models that are relevant to it. And these models include subscriptions that are recurring revenue. It could be project-based. It could be embedded in something else that we're doing, so it's indirect. It could be a multiyear programmatic, like a product management officer deployment service. So it really depends. So like Test & Learn is largely a subscription model. Our consulting services, we do project-based, as well as programmatic multiyear projects. If you take something like analytics or insights, it could be subscription-based, depending on what it is or how it's used. It could be project-based. It could be embedded in many of our other products. Actually, consumer analytics are insights, similarly for loyalty. So every single one of these components we take to market through a variety of economic models that depend on their capability and also depend on the solution of the use case. So it's no single model.

Yes. Okay. And so if we think about D&S in the context of the overall services business, roughly how much of services is D&S?

It's -- I'd just say it's a substantial portion of our services business, but we don't disclose our services at a more granular level. Services, collectively, including C&I, including D&S, including things like processing, are about 1/3 of our revenues last year. So that's just your flavor for it.

Right, right. And then in terms of underneath D&S, when we look at analytics versus consulting versus loyalty, how should we think about kind of the rough relative sizing of those different practice areas?

Each practice area is important. What's equally important is how the practice areas are used together because the way we go to market -- so we do distribute each component on a standalone basis, and then we also distribute components in bundles to address a particular need at a customer. And the analogy I use is -- Jason, I love to cook, so I'll give you a cooking analogy. So think about the D&S capabilities as pantry ingredients. We continue to keep the ingredients fresh. We continue to add ingredients either by building them or by buying them, right? So we have this whole pantry. And you can reach in and use an individual ingredient if that's the right use case for it. But a lot of what we also do is create meals, which could be a meal for a particular person, a meat eater, a vegan, you pick your favorite person. We can put meals for them that's appropriate for what they need. And then we also look for patterns. So we look at for customers that look like each other, that belong in the same segment that might have like needs. And we might, in addition to customizing the meal, we also mass customize the meal. So we may put it together, saying, this addresses this particular need across different customers that have the same challenges.

Right, like a package -- offering.

Yes, the same challenges. And then we can customize it to the customers needed, but it's off a shelf. So there's a variety of different ways in which we go to market. And we do this very closely with all of our regions, with North America, with all of our regions in international markets. It's done in close partnership with them.

Right. So if we think about the main consumers of D&S, is it primarily issuers as opposed to merchants? I think you mentioned governments as well. Can you give us just a general sense of when you think about kind of the revenue contribution underneath D&S? Is that like 80% issuer or -- just trying to get a general sense.

Yes. It's like in our core business, it's traditionally been financial institutions, issuers and acquirers. But we've expanded quite rapidly into new segments, and we're also expanding at our existing customers. So this -- if you think about services at Mastercard more broadly, it started many years ago because we had to think about how do we compete with our largest competitor. And we define new ways to grow, and we wanted to find new ways to diversify revenues to differentiate us. And so that's the origin. And today, the business, of course, is centered around our traditional issuers and acquirers. But like I said, at those banks, we do a lot more. And then we also work -- at our merchants, we do a lot more. And then we also work with new verticals like CPGs or fintechs or governments that are relatively new customers, transit systems. There are -- if you take merchants and CPGs, for example, our analytics capabilities, our Test & Learn capabilities, our SessionM capabilities are very relevant to them in payments and beyond payments as they drive their own businesses forward. If you take government, things like our geographic insights have been very useful to governments in the COVID crisis. By the way, government of all types, like I said, central banks; cities, New York, London, Madrid, states, governments of all types, to really understand the impact of COVID, understand sort of what the -- what their economies might look like, what exact policies have or lockdowns are coming out of lockdowns have, what sales tax basis look like, what they need to spend. So it's been -- it's really diversified our customer segments, and it's diversified our business at our traditional customers.

So -- okay. So that's interesting. So as you broadened out this customer set, has that led to more of a direct sales footprint within D&S? Maybe just talk a little bit about that, to what extent you kind of have your own salespeople versus kind of going through those who are kind of account managers for the big FIs or the big merchant.

Yes. So we go through our regions, North America and our international markets and our account managers. We have a consulting team. We have a global consulting firm. So that global consulting firm supports them. And that is how we go to market. We go to market in a very tight partnership with them. So this is -- it's a very integrated model.

Yes. So obviously, Mastercard's got literally trillions of dollars of payment volume going over its network. Can you talk about maybe some of the traditional as well as newer ways that Mastercard can leverage and ultimately monetize that data? And maybe as part of that, just talk about some of the kind of the limitations of that because I know, obviously, data privacy is very important.

So yes. It's interesting. Last year, in 2020, we switched 90 billion transactions. Think about that. That's a big number. It is top of scale. And in answer to your question, it's not just about how we monetize the data, but it's also how we safeguard the data as we monetize it. So we start with our data principles, which is you as a consumer. So Jason, this applies to you personally, right? You own your data. You control your data. You should benefit from your data, and our job is to make sure we protect that for you. So it really starts with safeguarding the data, and we aggregate and anonymize all of our data as we tease out the insights. Now with those safeguards in place, there's a lot that we do with it. And it comes to -- and really underlying that is our data and our data analytics capability which is truly unique. So we do things, for example, for our core business, a good example, a recent lease contact list, right? So if you think about COVID and if you think about what percentage of in-person transactions were touchless, it went from something like 3 out of 10 to 4 out of 10 within 1 year. So that's a pretty big increase. So we've been helping our issuers and our merchants with that in Data & Services, working, obviously, with our partners in North America and in [ I&A ] and our account managers there. So for example, we've driven a lot of customer campaigns with issuers on contactless because we can help them identify value propositions that would appeal to the consumer, identify segmentation, targeting, engagement, marketing engagement, to drive contactless. We can differentiate between populations that tap a lot and populations that don't tap us yet and what that journey looks like. We understand sort of where the first half might come from because it's typically everyday spend, transit, grocery, right? So we can really help them tailor campaigns with a very high ROI in order to drive that behavior. And then by the way, incorporated with the merchants, too, because we have merchants that realized in COVID that cash, coin handling is expensive. And in COVID, there was also the health concern around currency. And so we've also helped merchants with our data and service capabilities, inclusive of Test & Learn. Some of this is understanding which experiments are better than which -- other experiments and focusing on the ones that work the best. We're thinking about signage around contactless at the cashier versus in the window, thinking about incentives for the cashier, incentives for the consumer in terms of offers. And the cases where -- I'm thinking of this one particular customer case where we save them a lot of money because they were going to pay a lot in incentives and provide a lot in offers in terms of value, they did pay incentives, did pay offers but far less than they originally planned. And our Test & Learn platform showed that the signage at checkout is better than signage elsewhere. So a lot in contactless in this last year, 1.5 years.

Okay. Now if you reflect back on your prior role at Mastercard, and like you said, working with the North America financial institutions, can you now talk about how the role that Data & Services plays when you're -- either you're bidding for a new issuer portfolio or you're working on a renewal of an existing one? How do you bring the D&S capabilities to bear as part of that bidding process?

Yes. So whether it's a renewal or a flip -- I mean, in renewal, they know us, and so we have a track record with the institution, right? In a flip, they don't always know us. And by the way, here, services plays a role because sometimes they know us through services, even before they work with us in the core business. So they don't always know us, but sometimes they do know us. But in both cases, what they want to understand is if they work with us, how much better will it be? How much more profitable will the portfolio be? How well will it grow? Will it grow faster than the expectations were? So the questions are pretty similar. Now in a flip -- in addition to what you do in a renewal, in a flip, you also have to think about the conversion. And Jason, I'll tell you, we do conversions well, really, really well. And we do -- we can do conversions all the time. We have a great track record of this, and we use it as an opportunity to add incremental value. It's not just about the conversion. It's an opportunity to reengage the consumer and to reengage consumers that might be not so engaged or not at all engaged. We've done this in many, many, many institutions. We'll be doing it -- I think Michael Miebach talked about Deutsche Bank in our last earnings call. We'll be doing it with them. We did it -- we do it -- we do it for a small credit union. We do it for a large multi-country firm. A good example is Citi. We worked with them in 11 markets to do a conversion, and that was one of the more complicated conversions that went really well. We put a D&S team in place for the duration of the conversion, really any conversion of the products that you retire, the products that you introduce because it's a chance also to refresh your product suite. It's a chance to, like I said, reengage consumers in different ways. And so in that case -- in Citi's case, we did use a digital-first, mobile-first approach so that the -- it's not just about the conversion. It's also about activating the card and getting the consumer to use the card and ideally getting the consumer to use the card more than they used it before. And so in the cases...

Getting top of wallet, yes.

Right. Top of wallet. So in the Citi case, we used a mobile-first approach. And in every case, we map out the consumer journey and really try and understand how we can take the conversion and make it work better. We -- in the Citi case, we always come up with a playbook. In the Citi case, we have to take that playbook and tailor into 11 markets in various customer segments. So that was one of the more complicated conversions we did recently. And then once you convert, then it's similar to a renewal. You have to think about business intelligence. You have to think about portfolio optimization. You have to think about not just what the opportunity is, but how do you deliver that, what's the best way to deliver it. We think about loyalty, loyalty not just in the cards and payments business, but increasingly, across the consumer's relationship with the bank or with the merchant. So in the case of co-brands, we think of very bespoke value propositions that are very specific to the merchant. So we do a lot. So there's no single answer. But at the end of the day, it comes down to conversions, if it's a flip; and to adding value disproportionately, if it is a Mastercard program. And if we -- and they go with us.

Okay. You talked a bit about, obviously, how the pandemic has catalyzed increased usage of contactless. But obviously, it's also catalyzed a lot more e-commerce. So can you talk about how that e-commerce boost, what the implications of that are for the D&S business?

Yes. Jason, it's accelerated e-commerce. It's accelerated contactless. It is accelerated frictionless retail. It's accelerated automation and deployment of machine learning, AI and other data analytics. It's accelerated a number of trends in a good way. It's interesting because when I took this business over in January, it was pre-COVID. There was COVID in a few parts of Asia Pacific, but it was pre-COVID. And 45 days into my new role, we could feel the freeze coming from East to West and then from North to South, and we froze. And there was a moment where I was looking at this global business saying, "What do we do now?" But only for a moment because, very quickly, we realized that in the face of uncertainty, D&S can play a huge role. Because in the face of uncertainty, you think about what you can control and what you can't control. And insights and data and analytics matter. Experimentation and understanding which experiments work matters. And you have to throw out last year's data. You have to start thinking about last year's consumer. It's the here and now that suddenly matters because the old way of doing things becomes irrelevant very, very quickly. And so that's what happened. And so in some ways, Data & Services, we were able to stand up and do new things. So we created Recovery Insights, which is across Mastercard, to help our partners, merchants, banks, governments, assess, react and recover to the pandemic. We have something like 1,000 engagements there, including with governments of various types. We realized that our Economics Institute is valuable. Our spending policy, that was very valuable. Our scenario planning tools were very valuable, and then there were some great stories. So for example, Test & Learn and analytics in grocers really help them, right? We worked with grocers across the globe. A good example is Hema; which is on 3 continents very early in the pandemic. It now sounds like it's obvious. We helped them -- the initial hypothesis was stock the big stores. We worked with our Test & Learn platform to show that it's actually the small stores, not the big stores, because people are shopping closer to home. It sounds obvious now. It didn't -- how quickly you identify these and act on them matters. We realized the supply chains for many grocers were disrupted. So one day, a lot of stuff came in. The next day, nothing came in. So their folks needed time to shut down the store and restock. We recognized that some populations needed -- vulnerable populations need separate hours. And so we came up with early mornings for vulnerable people in some grocers, closed early and restock in the evening because nobody was shopping in the evening anymore. So we did a lot of interesting with grocers. Our SessionM platform -- here's another example. We were working with a CPG brand on in-home hair color, for your hair, before the pandemic.

I wouldn't know anything about that, but most people would.

I would admit to knowing anything about it. But as soon as the pandemic struck and we all froze has salons shut down. So all of a sudden in-home hair color became relevant. And so we were able to help them scale this very rapidly, and they blew every forecast that they come up with before. Other examples, we permitted in our loyalty platform to telemedicine. Nobody was traveling, so we brought the e-commerce. We thought about, instead they going to their brands and shopping or they going to visit places and having priceless experiences, we brought those offers in terms of e-commerce benefits into the house. We brought those prices experiences into their homes. We've pivoted to telemedicine. So for example, in Latin America, we've launched [ Solutia ] which does doctors' appointments, all kinds of telemedicine in Mexico and Colombia. We pivoted our Concierge in Europe to telemedicine to do deliveries, home deliveries of goods. We did -- we combined -- in the Middle East, we combined e-commerce insurance. So if your stuff shows up or doesn't show up, it shows up damaged, the wrong thing item shows up, so e-commerce insurance, coupled with identity protection, because you're doing this online now. And when you go digital, there are lots of bad guys, so insurance and protection for the individual identity protection. So it's been a very productive year because we've realized that there's a lot in Data & Services that goes beyond what we were historically doing. We'll continue doing that, but it opens up all kinds of new venues and opportunities. So it's much about serving our existing partners in new ways as it is about finding new partners and doing new innovative things in the marketplace. So it's been a very interesting 14 months.

Well, it sounds like you've come up with all kinds of new use cases that otherwise might not have really surfaced. So clearly, you've pivoted in a positive direction. One thing I wanted to ask you is just about differentiation in the marketplace. And what I mean by that is, obviously, Mastercard's competitors also talk about having robust services capabilities in a lot of the areas that we've discussed, whether it's analytics or loyalty, et cetera. Tell us what you hear from customers and what you think yourself, just in terms of the differentiated aspects of Mastercard services, whether it's specific to D&S or even more broadly across your services portfolio.

Yes. And I think this is true across our services portfolio, which is we have a very unique set of services. It's a curated set. And in each of our services, the competitive set, the people that we compete against are different. And so it's a very curated set of assets that are relevant to our partners and our existing partners as well as new partners. And it comes from, whether it's in D&S or whether it's in our cyber business, it comes from decades of experience and track record and building organically and through acquisition. And this is true across the board. The -- and the advantages that we have in this curated set is the -- if you take our insights business, it's a good example. It's the global scale that we have. It's unrivaled in terms of the data-driven insights that we have, the breadth and the depth of it. The global scale that we have in our consulting franchise, in loyalty, when we think about our platforms, when we think about the partner networks we have to source offers, insurances, benefits, e-commerce offers, et cetera. And it's those advantages, coupled with the ability to partner with individual partners in a way that Mastercard does so well. I know from my previous job, right, we really have a B2B2C model. We worked very closely with our partners. It is -- and we really think about what their issues and challenges are and how we can tailor what we have to help them accelerate what is it -- whatever it is that they're trying to do or protect themselves better. So that's really -- that's really at the core of it. And in our data business, given our data expertise, we're extending the data business in ways that are interesting. So for example, data is a strength of Mastercard. I think that's a very unique strength across the board. So for example, I'll give you a recent example. We introduced this product called PEAP, P-E-A-P, Privacy Enhanced Analytics Platform. So this illustrates what we can do, right? So this allows you, as a bank, to build machine learning models on your entire consumer data universe, consented and unconsented, while still being completely compliant with GDPR and with privacy. And so it is a set of analytical techniques that are made available on a platform that it gives our banks a new approach for data sciences. So I think there are things like that, that underscore -- I think there are similar examples in cyber, if you asked my partner, Ajay, Ajay Bhalla. There are things that are real Mastercard strengths that are really unique, and they come from a multi-decade approach to creating, curating and building capabilities and then combining them in different ways.

Okay. Yes. That's helpful. I wanted to also come back to a comment you made earlier about going to market through your various regions around the world. So can you take us around the world across the different regions and just talk about what the uptake of D&S tends to look like? To what extent does it vary across different regions? Or are there certain parts of D&S that are more popular, if you will, in certain parts of the world? And where are you focused in terms of growth acceleration opportunities from a regional perspective on D&S?

The -- we have a global franchise. Just like Mastercard does, D&S is also global. Every region contributes. And we -- contributes both in terms of standing at a very solid foundation of revenue, and every region also contributes to the revenue growth. And we very actively transfer best practices and ideas from one geography to the other in a very systematic way and in a relevant way. You know what underlies it is 3 very simple principles that I'll articulate for you which underlies everything that we do. One is to build a global scale but in a way that is compliant with our data responsibility principles. But build a global scale. Second is to deliver with local relevance and deliver, like I said, either to an individual customer or to customers that look like each other, right, either fully customized or mass customized. But it has to be delivered with local relevance. And at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the customer. It's very customer-centric. If we can create value for the customer, we create value for Mastercard. And so that's a very simple principle of philosophy. But it's a global franchise, and there's demand for all of our services in just about every region and country and segment.

Okay. Now what about as we think about going forward, what types of newer offerings or extensions of existing offerings should we expect might able to fuel this next leg of growth for D&S in the coming years?

So I'm very excited to think about the future because, as you think about Data & Services, we know the world is getting more and more digital. There's more and more data. And we're also able to manipulate it faster, deliver insights more rapidly and more at the point where it's needed. So it's really exciting to think about what you can do and how creative you can be, how much you can personalize, et cetera, as we think about the future. And I'd say the future legs of growth are very similar to what I described before. One is to embed it into the Mastercard strategy, and the other is to extend Mastercard into new areas, new segments. And so the Mastercard strategy piece is very similar to what you might have heard from our core business. So for example, in a multi-rail, we're thinking about data and services in the context of multi-rail. We already have deployment capabilities today that we go with real-time payments. We do a lot of strategy consulting work. We are in places where multi-rail is more mature. We already have an analytics business and an insights business. And as we add rails and you think about Data & Services, it expands our data suite because we'll have what -- the kind of data we have on our card rails, we will have on other rails, too. It also -- it goes beyond that. It also creates value in terms of our ability to look across rails and to actually look -- take a 360 consumer view across all the rails that our consumer is using or our customer is using, depending on their use case. So multi-rail was definitely an area where -- we already have a D&S franchise, but there'll be more. Another one is open banking, which is another priority for our core business. At the end of the day, it's about helping consumers access better financial services. And there's a ton of opportunities for banks, not just fintechs, but also banks in this and for other types of partners. And we're working with a ton of players in Europe, a ton of partners. In the U.S., Finicity acquisition will help a lot, and by the way, doing it all with the same data responsibility principles that we and Finicity believe in, very, very important. Transparency, privacy, critically important. And in open banking, in consulting alone, I think 2 years ago, our consulting practice was predominantly Europe-based. About 3/4 of our consulting revenues for open banking consulting came from Europe. And then that has evolved to about 40% now, but the consulting franchise has also grown in open banking. So as the pie has grown, the piece of Europe has shrunk. That just tells you the diversity and the globality of it, right? So that's sort of tied to Mastercard's core strategy. There's a piece of it which is also tied to Mastercard's strategy to expand, and that's around more around AI and automation and business intelligence, things like I was talking about the PEAP program that we just introduced, Privacy Enhanced Analytics Platform; things like digital consumer engagement; contextual marketing; personalization. There's a lot there in terms of analytic techniques that we're also in the envelope on. So we'll continue to be consumer-centric. We'll continue to look at data responsibilities. And we'll continue to think about how we can serve our current partners in more ways to add value to them and to Mastercard and to find new partners to work with in more ways. So that is -- at the core of it, that is the future.

Okay. And maybe just to wrap very quickly, how do you think about pursuing that future with a balance of organic investment and M&A?

So that will be very similar to what we've done in the past, right? We've always been both -- we built and bought and partnered, by the way. We start with our strategy, what matters versus what are you trying to do. So you're going to start with your strategy and then figure out what's the best way to achieve the strategy and execute it, which could be an acquisition. It could be a build. It could be a partnership. It could be a combination of them. So -- and then when we do an acquisition, be very disciplined about it. We have a very clear business case. We track it very closely, especially in the first couple of years and make sure that we're delivering against the acquisition business case and tweaking it as we go. So example is SessionM. We acquired it prepandemic. Through the pandemic, we actively worked with them to figure out how best to optimize SessionM with great results. And then in D&S, we've done both acquisitions like SessionM or APT that are adjacent to our business and extend the business. We've also done acquisitions to enhance or improve our business. A good example would be Cytegic that we acquired in the first quarter of last year. It accelerates some of -- it helps us do some of our cyber consulting, Cyber Quant consulting much more effectively and efficiently because it comes with a bunch of algorithms and scripts. It also fits very nicely into C&I because they bought RiskRecon. So RiskRecon, there's an outside-in cyber scan; and Cyber Quant, which includes Cytegic, as an inside-out scan. And what we can do is help a customer really think through how they can improve their fraud and cyber exposures across the 2. So there will be acquisitions. We'll also build. We'll also partner. You see all of the above. As you saw in the past, you see the vision.

Well said. Well, I know we're out of time right now. Really appreciate all of your thoughts and your insights, Raj. Appreciate you being with us. And for the audience, our next symposium session will be at 11 a.m. That will be our faster payments panel. So thanks, everyone, for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.