Mastercard Incorporated Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026

Thank you. Thank you for doing this with me.

Sure. I have been with Mastercard for 17 years. From the very beginning, I have always known I want to be the CFO of Mastercard. No, that is not true. In fact, I grew up in Mastercard as a general manager. My first job, I ran Greater China as a division. Then I went to London, had a global job, went to Singapore, co-headed Asia. Then went back to London, co-headed international markets, and then last year, I headed back to Singapore. So I made two round trips between London and Singapore, running a huge cluster of Mastercard's markets and divisions. I think one of the things that is really amazing is in the last 17 years, I had a front-row seat to some of the most amazing developments in our industry, including things like Apple Pay.

Right tokenization, right? The sort of innovation you just would not have imagined in 2000.

Also the fact that we got domestic switching in Japan, domestic license in China, and now we have again had a groundbreaking wing in the UAE in terms of becoming the domestic switch or the technology provider for the domestic switch in the UAE. So those things are all amazing, so I really am glad that I can bring that experience now to the CFO job because I understand what shapes the numbers and that sort of insight I think is going to be very helpful to this job.

My view of the role is I can do this in my sleep. This is a piece of cake. No. It is not true. So I am still learning the CFO job. But one of the things I would say, though, my focus is squarely on driving top-line growth. Mastercard is a growth stock. I want to make sure in terms of capital allocation, we continue to drive top-line growth. And that is through both organic growth, but also inorganic through mergers and acquisitions. If I think about the organic growth, it is really about continue to allocate more investments in the front line. Mastercard is a B2B company. We do not go to consumers directly, right? The ability to work with the banks and the issuers and acquirers, that requires engagement.

People on the ground talking to our customers and also co-create things that really are relevant, that address their pain points. That is really important. If we see the right opportunities out there in the market and we can make acquisitions to drive growth and speed to market or acquire new capabilities, we are going to do that as well. That is really important in my mind. The second order of priorities is going to be about a strong balance sheet because without a strong balance sheet, we will not be able to do the M&A work we need to do. Positive operating leverage, continue to make sure revenue growth outpaces expenses. The last thing is whatever excess capital we have will return to shareholders via buybacks and dividend.

Yeah. I think what is really interesting is the overall macro environment remains very supportive of both consumer spend and business spend. I continue to be impressed by how resilient consumers are. In the U.S., that resilience continues to shine through. People are spending their money on travel. Americans are going to box office movies like "Spider-Man" and "Odyssey." They are spending money on experiences such as dining. Entertainment, in general, is a huge category, so that is still there. The other thing that is really impressive is if you think about travel, people are still doing this, and it is across the board, and it is very broad-based, both in terms of affluent and also mass consumers. Of course, there are uncertainties, right? We still have a war in the Middle East. But I think one of the things that is really important to remember is our business model is very diversified.

We are diversified across different markets. In terms of payment flows, we are diversified. But also in terms of revenue mix, we have both payments and services. That resilience, our resilience really comes from this diversification. I remain very optimistic about the growth. One of the things maybe I want to talk a little bit about is the operating metrics that we are seeing. In the first 4 weeks of August, broadly, all the operating metrics are in line with the first 4 weeks in July that we are seeing. That is really strong, and that is very consistent, and it is very positive.