Our growth algorithm is about capturing the natural growth of economies, accelerating the secular shift to electronic payments, further penetrating the addressable market in new flows and growing our share of the market.  It’s also about growing in services and new networks by scaling our solutions to existing and new customer types, while continuing to build and deploy new solutions. 

Let me show you the algorithm at work:

01
Expanding in payments

People have a choice in how they pay – card, account-to-account, buy now, pay later and more. Our focus is on giving them a reason to choose Mastercard across all these areas. And they are.

We’re winning new business in consumer payments – proof that our efforts to expand digitization are working. Two quick examples – last year, we significantly expanded our partnership with UniCredit, with the group deciding to use Mastercard across 12 markets and 13 of its banks. In the U.S., we became the exclusive payments network for Citizens Bank, one of three regulated debit financial institutions to make that decision in 2023.

This is balanced with more merchants choosing to accept Mastercard. When new merchants – no matter how small or how remote – tap into our network, they can immediately reach a thriving global digital market.

And we’re creating these ripple effects in other payment flows.

Our work in commercial payments has expanded into education, travel and many other new kinds of business. We’re doing more in disbursements and remittances, commercial point of sale and business-to-business accounts payable. For example, some healthcare providers are using our virtual cards to replace the cumbersome process of manually submitting claims – unlocking faster, more reliable, more efficient commerce. Taken together, these commercial markets offer a huge opportunity to expand our business and drive long-term growth.

02
Extending our services

Payments and services are deeply interconnected. As we help digitize more payments, that opens more opportunities for us to deliver value-added services – including data insights, consulting and cybersecurity. The growth of those services drives more digital payments – and that flywheel keeps turning. Our value-added services and solutions now account for more than 35% of revenue and grew faster than core payments last year.

Our focus in services is all about creating efficiency and value. For example, Mastercard has been using predictive AI for years, especially in our cybersecurity solutions and fraud detection work to protect the billions of transactions that run through our network. To keep up this work, earlier this year we unveiled Decision Intelligence Pro, which uses generative AI to predict the authenticity of transactions, boosting banks' fraud detection work.

There is still more predictive AI can deliver even as we explore the potential in generative AI. We are working to integrate AI into even more of what we do in a principled manner to make every digital experience even smarter, even safer and even more personalized.

Our approach to AI is the same as with any other technology – we’re focused on trust, security and consumer protections first. That’s why this year we continued to evolve our data and tech responsibility principles – security and privacy, transparency, accountability, fairness, inclusion, innovation, social impact – to ensure they remain relevant and valuable guardrails. And we are using them to collaborate with partners and help shape trustworthy standards across industries, including through the U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium.

This only happens because our people make it possible – all 33,000+ Mastercard colleagues – coders, consultants, economists, cybersecurity experts, everyone.

Our culture and the way we work together combine both high performance and high empathy. That’s how we achieve the things we do. The Mastercard Way is our guiding star for how we do it, focused on three tenets:

• Create value – for our partners, teams and investors by thinking big and bold, and innovating
• Grow together – by helping each other be great
• Move fast – prioritizing what matters and pivoting when needed

Underlying the Mastercard Way is our commitment to ensure the social and environmental impact we have equally drives our business – do well by doing good.

For example, we continue to make progress on our ambitious goal of bringing 1 billion more people into the digital economy. That’s expanding opportunities for people while also seeding our future markets.

As I close this letter, I thank my Mastercard colleagues all over the world for their dedication, caring and passion. And thank you to our customers and partners for trusting us and innovating with us.