MasterCard CFO On Its Digital Strategy

In an interview conducted with JPMorgan, offered via transcription by Seeking Alpha, Martina Hund-Mejean, chief financial officer of MasterCard, stated that overall, consumer spend is on par with expectations: “We are really not seeing much of a different behavior. The volumes are coming through the same way as we discussed it from an economic point of view. We don’t see that the consumer had a step-down in spend.”

JPMorgan’s payments analyst, Tien-tsin Huang, asked about the state of the firm’s digital business. In response, the MasterCard executive said: “From a digital point of view, this is not a separate product line item for us. In fact, we are looking at digital as totally connected to the … 16-digit card number that you have on a prepaid card, on a commercial card, on a credit card, on a debit card. So, what we do in digital is actually powering those 16-digit account numbers in the digital space … We are just working in a huge way to get our infrastructure out there.”

And, continued the CFO: “So, it means basically what our interest is that issuers are getting enabled on our infrastructure, MasterPass. They can use the wallet if they want to … So, that means that millions of consumers who are banking with these issuers are basically loaded onto the infrastructure and that it will be relatively easy for them once they are loaded and the credentials have been loaded with the first transaction that they might be using with a MasterPass. They just have to say, ‘I agree,’ to the terms and conditions, and then, they are off and running.”

Turning attention to the merchant side, she continued: “We are focused on how to make it as easy as possible for the merchant to be putting up that button, MasterPass, on their website, and then, in the physical space, we know, of course, that the MasterPass can be used from an NFC capability point of view. If you have an Android phone, the iPhone is not yet open for other NFC capability, other than the Apple Pay. So, when you look at that with, what, 22,000 financial institutions and over 40 million merchants, it’s really a marathon, right? … This is what we are focused on, and there are number of upgrades coming out from us over the next couple of months or so, where I think you are going to start seeing that trajectory really coming out.”