It's always a treat when I get outside

of Yahoo Finance HQ in New York City and

visit companies where they live and

breathe. Like I love doing this stuff.

This is just what I do and I'm in the

zone. For this episode of Power Players,

I am in Purchase New York, headquarters

[music] for Mastercard. You know

Mastercard. You've used their cards.

You've seen them on TV. You've seen

those priceless commercials. I'm going

inside the future of Mastercard with CEO

Michael Maybach. We're going to talk

about everything under the sun.

Michael, good to see you again. It's

been a while actually since I've seen

you in the flesh. So, thanks for doing

this. I appreciate it.

>> Yeah. Uh years. [laughter]

>> Years. Well, we still look both great.

>> Completely overdue. Yeah. Happy to uh

have you here and

>> this is like purchasing your This is the

uh this is the mothership for

Mastercard. I mean, how often

>> I mean, you spend a lot of time in here.

You're always traveling around, right?

>> I don't spend a lot of time here. Uh but

you know since it's the home of

pricelessness um I it's always good to

come back and reconnect at the

mothership with all my colleagues here

but then you know we're we're a super

global company.

>> Uh yes we're listed proudly listed here

in the US but we're a truly global

business and I want to be out there and

see what's going on in China, what's

going on in Europe, what's going in in

you know just recently in Africa.

>> What I think folks don't appreciate is

the history of your company. This is

what 60 years. 60 years. 20 years of our

IPO to celebrate it on the day after

Labor Day this year. 20 years.

>> What would surprise someone about the

history of Mastercard?

>> You know, it started off as a

proposition to pay a meal in New York.

Um, and now we are positioned since we

have our license in China, it' be the

most global way to pay. Nobody had could

have had an idea that that would ever

work like that. It was hard work for 60

years building a global financial

network, building one of the most

powerful consumer brands. I think is

surprise over surprise. But today um I

do come across surprises because we you

know we continue to innovate. We

continue to imagine how you know value

is exchanged how money moves and um you

know our brand doesn't even catch up

with this. So I talked to a customer and

they said let's talk about cards and

said well why don't we also talk about a

gen commerce? Why don't we also talk

about stable coins? And yeah, well, what

do you guys do? And they said, let me

tell you what we're all doing because

it's happening so fast. All of this just

started really last year.

>> Did the business start with a card?

>> It I think it did. Yes.

>> But you always like integral to the

plumbing of the

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> We are today if you you look at it.

Plumbing is a great word. May maybe you

know the way we like to think about like

the operating system of the digitally.

>> I don't want to discount it by saying

plumbing. You said it fancy. I'm just

looking for words here. like we're

taking this in real time.

>> So, uh yeah, we're kind of the operating

system. So, like how is value exchange

today? Um 220 countries and territory.

So, we're that infrastructure, but we're

not an infrastructure company as such.

You know, we are also a data company.

We're an insights company. We help our

customers i.e., you know, banks for

example, FinTech make better decisions

to run their business. We're a customer

consumer experiences company. Priceless,

everybody knows priceless. And we enable

priceless experiences through our

partners for consumers. We do all of the

above and more.

>> So when you I I think I originally

talked to you kind of when you got this

job uh maybe 2022

>> feels like yesterday. I don't know what

it feels like for you.

>> Well, it feels like you know there's

this comparison between human years and

dog years. So it does feel this was an

intense period.

>> There were a few things other than co

that went on since.

>> How did you get ac acclimated so quickly

during that period? You know, it was

interesting and we announced the

leadership transition here in this

building on the 25th of February 2020

actually. So, it was only weeks later.

Nobody went anywhere. Nobody traveled.

And to get a climatized with this job to

to to pick up your your your term, the

team around the table

needed to Okay, here's a new leader.

We're all trying to figure this out. and

uh we all said to each other we don't

have a plan there is no playbook for a

pandemic that has a jelling function so

team rattly okay what do we have to do

we have to meet our customers where they

are so if anybody has a digital business

they're probably going to do better and

we have to accelerate that business if

you have a physical business with a shop

then nobody can leaves their house

that's a problem so we were adjusting to

that in real time um fortunately we have

a lot of data and we could how behaviors

were shifting. Um so we threw uh a lot

of um kind of established beliefs out of

the window at the time and said we got

to rethink this time. In those periods

in those years 21 22 digital only

businesses scaled like crazy. We um

because we're having a leg in the

physical economy as well as in digital

economy um our revenue got severely

impacted. You know what that does to a

team? You start to get very frugal. You

focus really on resiliency.

We said we cannot have that ever again.

So we invested in technology at that

time and said we have to be much more

flexible. This was just becoming our

sole obsession as a team and it really

jailed. How did you what did you learn

about yourself in those early days? Six

months into this job, first time CEO,

you're it's a pandemic. You're seeing

numbers that nobody's ever seen before.

And look, I I really firmly believe a

lot of executives that, you know,

managed to that period have set

themselves up for success five to six

years later because of that what they

went through.

>> It it was a big learning. Well, one of

one of the things that I picked up was

it's good to be in the office. So every

day I drove to the office including my

predecessor who was our exec chair for a

period of time. Every day we showed up

here and there was five of us. One

gentleman from our canteen company who

was brave enough to come in

>> in this office.

>> Yes. Yeah. It was five of us, security

person, uh, one of my colleagues who

brought his dog because his dog sitter

wasn't around any longer. And this was

the the think tank, the group being with

people was important at the time. But

the people aspect is the bigger point

that I want to make is

there was a lot there in in leadership

that came to the forefront where

everybody was dealing with fundamental

things in their lives. Um, you there was

fears and you know kids were at home and

people had to just adjust their lives in

dramatic ways. So the empathy part of

leadership just dialed up. You know, I

had a very technical job before as a

chief product officer and suddenly there

was this other element and it just in a

short period of time probably balanced

me out a bit. I hope for the better.

That was very helpful. You back to the

first uh your first question, we really

accelerated making this company more

resilient. We invested in the

fundamentals technology and saying

probably we we will have more change in

the coming years than we've seen in the

last 20 years since the IPO or 15 years

at that time or in the last 60 years

even. So it's accelerating more. We have

invested in those years from 22 to 23

completely rearchitecting our global

network. So the people side of it

investing in resilience and making our

technology much more flexible making the

fundamental point is not about the card

despite the fact that uh we are called

master card but when you see us out

there you don't see the word you see the

two interlocking circles that generally

stand for trust and we're becoming a

company that is basically involved in

driving value exchange of any kind.

>> How has the business changed

versus when you took over? What are some

of the biggest changes?

>> Uh diversification of our revenue is

kind of like for example something that

uh uh investors observe. Um so there's a

big part of our business that uh helps

us differentiate a mastercard payment

from another payment. let's say a local

payment network in country ABC

that will be that payment is most likely

not as secure as a mastercard payment

because we have more data to train our

models to approve decisions uh your

payment uh payments to be good or not

good in a much more effective way. So

those services we we sell uh we sell

them to our customers, we sell them to

other customers that use payment

networks and so forth. So this

diversification in cyber security space

massive that's a big change our

geographic spread we used the time to be

in more markets um and open more offices

around the world so that we are more

global most notably China we now have

domestic license in China that increases

our footprint absolutely dramatically in

the underlying infrastructure part of

payments there's something that you know

uh people in our industry call rails

>> so behind the terminal. Yeah, there's

this wire that goes into something

that's the card rail, which is our

global network.

>> Where does it even exist? Like, it's

just out there in the air somewhere.

>> It's the ether. It's in the ether,

[laughter] but you know, it is in a set

of data centers around the world. So,

it's very it's very physical in in a

way. So, we invested in in in that

network and that has much more reach

today. And if you take today's

geopolitical landscape and you compare

it to five years ago. So during co we

saw supply chain fragmentation generally

speaking with you know goods couldn't

flow. So countries were asking

themselves well what do I do if I can't

get what I need? So I need to be more

self-dependent.

Today we have that accelerating with

more geopolitical pressure that further

accelerates fragmentation uh in the

global political geopolitical landscape.

So imagine you're a global company like

ours. We need to be able to adjust more

flexibly in our network what a country

wants in their country and what a

country is quite happy to consume from

other countries. So that was all in the

in that year we basically the notion was

run anything anywhere. If we deal with

India and they want it like this great

then we can do that and if we in another

country yet again something else it's to

ensure that it's not thousand flowers

bloom but some sort of an organized

fashion to adjust to a more fragmented

world. That is how the business has

changed. So today we can do that. Um

just today we announced the partnership

with the UAE for exactly that. We're

going to be their national payment

switch. Um that's a big deal. um if we

hadn't done the homework back in the

years 22 23 we couldn't be able to do

that today in a world where um everybody

every company is trying to engage

consumers and compete for the for the

next company that's also trying to

engage that same consumer better offers

that come in your email some of them

feel super random and you just delete

them I do that

>> I assume they're coming from an AI bot

>> yeah yes but that would be a bad AI bot

most likely

>> so you know insights consumer engage

engagement big topic big part of our

business today. It was at the time but

we we grew that much more. We acquired

dynamic yield is a large company uh you

know it was originally busy in the

personalization space right offer at the

right time that feels if you permit the

data to be used in your personal context

with your personal preferences. Wouldn't

that be helpful? So you don't have to

delete everything. It just comes in the

right way.

>> Well I never delete anything from

Mastercard just because I'm sorry.

>> I never delete anything from Mastercard.

>> You know I think that's a good choice.

[laughter] I don't have to say that

because of No, I'm just kidding.

>> That's a good choice. So, yeah. So,

diversification, better technology and,

you know, we we had to change our talent

along with that or grow our talent

rather than change our talent. You know,

investing on our people to be able to,

you know, handle those different

offerings that we now have for our

customers. So, it's a fundamentally

different uh company. It changed with

the IPO. It changed again postco and

we're going to go through more cycles

right now with digital assets and crypto

and everything. Has it become harder to

be a global company like Mastercard

given the geopolitical headwinds and the

headwinds are such that the US is

becoming more insular?

>> Our mindset I I said is we are a global

company. Yeah. We're proudly a US

company but where we show up we we try

to be as local as needed and add as much

of the benefit of being global as

possible best practices from both sides.

That's not new. Um I recall a board

meeting in 2015 in Stockholm of all

places where we had a discussion what do

we do with rising nationalism where

every country this was you know 2015

long time ago this was a discussion so

we have learned to adjust

to find a balance between local and

global um global if you want technology

gives us more tools to do that be able

to run anything anywhere is a big

component onent of that. Now you need to

have some sort of a good starting point

and an understanding and relationship.

So we have people on the ground uh

generally local teams that understand

the market. We engage governments and it

turns out if I take a half a step back a

full step back today and say you know

when I take a range of global

governments we're generally aligned with

what governments want. Geopolitics is

one thing we don't deal in geopolitics.

But when it comes to financial inclusion

and building resilience and and you know

consistent growth in a country every

government wants that every uh

government without exception thinks a

big part of that is small business. So

how do you engage small business and

here we are there is a set of solutions

how we can enable a small business to

operate more digitally and therefore

compete in a better way. Um so you find

the common points of connection. Um and

then um

you zoom out and say ideally this is not

for one country but you see the common

points of connection across a range of

markets. Other things that are common

other than small business is resilience.

Everybody does not want one solution.

Yes, I want my own solution for my own

country but what if something goes

wrong? I need two or three solutions. So

I do want global partners. A common

point is security. Cyber security. You

know the fraudsters and the scammers

don't care about borders. That's a

global trait. It's a Yes. They just want

your money. It's a it's a battlefield

today. It's an ongoing arms race

particularly now since the rise of Gen

AI. Every government wants a partner

that can help with that

>> and you need global data sets to see

where are the threat factors, where is

the next threat going to come from. So

there's a range of commonalities. So we

find despite a you know somewhat

difficult and fastmoving geopolitical

landscape that there are fundamental

things that matter to everybody and it's

also true that global trade isn't done

uh yes there's you know trade policy

discussions going on nevertheless if I

just look at our crossber business and

people are traveling and they're

ordering things from elsewhere that

still keeps going so we focus on that

where we can help um and because we are

present in the country, we generally get

it right to understand what's on

people's minds.

>> Well, the flip side of that, has it

become easier from a regulatory front to

do business in the US?

>> So, the US has since I moved here um 10

years ago actually. Um since I moved

here 10 years ago, it's always been a

busy friend culture. um you know we just

celebrated 250 years and you look back

what's the American dream and it's kind

of like oh you can do attitude and you

know let's build something let's go uh

there's risk capital they can support

that all that has worked um and you know

subsequent uh you know administrations

they're very open to listen to business

where you know all you know many of my

peers u we ourselves are um part of the

BRT the business roundt the voice of

business is taken very seriously when we

have a BRT meeting, you generally have

bipartisan uh you know representation,

open very open dialogue like here that's

what's not working. That's what we need.

So that's working here. Um and then you

know we we try to take some of those

best practices and argue in other

countries it would be good to be more

open and and have that kind of business

engagement.

>> We've seen a real they call it the

K-shaped economy and I I always ask

economic questions. I have to remind

myself like he is not the chief

communist, you know, NASCAR, but we've

seen this K-shaped economy continue.

>> Mhm.

>> How long do you think it continues and

why?

>> You know, predicting the economic

outcome, you should really talk to our

chief economist about that. But when it

comes to the uh the K-shaped economy,

the lens that we have on that is so we

see a good part of consumer spending,

but we don't see all of consumer

spending. So, we're not the economy. Um

but on to the pretty large part of what

people spend on cards um we we can see

segments and general spending behavior

and what's been true and what's been

true for

go back the last year one and a half

years of those kind of data points that

I have pretty present in my mind is that

consumer spending on lower income bands

and consumer spending on higher income

bands continues to grow. So we have not

seen dramatic changes.

What we see is when you go to lower

income bands is you see savvy consumers.

So the digital economy comes with some

ability to understand what's your best

deal. You can shop around much easier.

You can see you know best deal over

here. Um I can do that. So people using

the information that the digital economy

makes available to make their dollar go

further. Uh that's number one. Um the

other thing that we're seeing is clearly

spending decisions that um balance

between discretionary

as in am I going to do this trip or

non-discretionary I have to fill my gas

tank. So that's happening and it it's

pretty fluid and it goes along with kind

of where gas prices are and so forth. So

these adjustments are pretty the

consumer does exactly that. So from that

perspective um the statement you know

affordability clearly is a topic um but

we don't see it coming through because

for now the consumer is is still

adjusting in general consumer spending

is growing that is true for the United

States that statement is generally true

for most other you know developed

countries in emerging markets the

dynamics are a little bit different

>> you mentioned uh cyber security several

times and I'm worried about it too I'm

worried about

>> you should be bots

wiping out my bank account. Like, h how

how how worried does the average person

need to be about the agentic AI era

sucking the money out of their account

at without them even realizing it?

>> So, fundamentally, let's just zoom out a

little bit. Um, when you if you were to

say that cyber crime is a country,

it would be so what's expected is that

cyber crime will add up to 15.6 trillion

by 2030. If you rank order that by

countries, GDP would be the third

largest country in the world. So, it's

big. It's an arms race. Generative AI,

you know, to name one technology that's

available to the fraudsters and scammers

as well as to the people who defend your

bank, for example, that's going to try

to protect you from that. So, it's an

arms race that's going on. Um, now very

specific to the point about agentic

commerce. So, so if you have a world

where you delegate decisions,

you know, with the best intention

because you don't want to deal with kind

of administrative stuff,

>> go buy me a shirt.

>> Um, I want to go and book a trip. You

want to book a trip and yeah, there's a

bunch of things that are behind that

trip from the hotel to the uh to the

airline to whatever some some gear that

you need to for your hike, etc., etc. If

you imagine a world where there's a

whole new payment ecosystem emerging

where uh one agent deals with another

and all of that that could go that needs

to establish itself and we're not there

yet and I don't think that's actually

going to come because what instead is

happening on on e-commerce is the

payment industry looked at this and said

all right so what do we have we have a

consumer that still wants to buy

something wants to just use a different

approach to do it you still have a shop,

probably more than one in this case

because you're going to buy these things

from different providers in one go and

you still have the bank of the shop and

you have your bank. So the participants

are still the same with one addition.

It's the agent.

>> Okay. So why don't we not undo the whole

thing because we have pretty good

security protection. you know, the the

the system is there, the standards are

there, the controls that check,

can you possibly make this uh

transaction that you're just about to do

because you've never ever done something

like that. Maybe we should ask a

question or you actually right now in

Mexico and this transaction is emanating

from an IP address that's somewhere else

in the world bad etc. There's all these

warning signs. So why would we undo

that? So let's use that. So the agent is

an additional party in this ecosystem.

Just didn't exist before. So in uh April

last year, we created something called

agent pay. Sounds very fancy out of like

a spy.

>> I want to use it already. [laughter]

>> You want to use that because who

wouldn't want agent pay. So agent pay

basically just recognizes there's an

additional party and that party needs to

go through the same vetting that the

person had to go through. Are you real?

And all of that be accredited in the

network as an entity that exists like

you are with your card number.

>> [snorts]

>> And then the same checks and balances

apply. So the one big advantage over um

the current card ecosystem is actually

even safer is that today you have

transactions particularly in the

physical space when you go in a store

that are not fully tokenized. So there's

still clear card numbers that your

16-digit number. There's some parts of

the world and some transactions where

that still is flying through the

internet. Instead of being tokenized in

a password like a wraparound can be only

used in one instance, all of these

transactions in the world of Agentic

will all be tokenized and they're extra

safe.

>> So no, no need to worry. Um no need to

worry that more than today. So you

should do it. Um I the world is just not

ready right now. There's not too many

agentic experiences at this point. we we

feel it's going to come. So,

>> this is where it's going. I'm gonna have

my own agent and I'm gonna talk to your

agent and they're going to talk and I'm

gonna get a trip out of this.

>> Yes, that's exactly how it's going to

go.

>> And you get a piece gets a piece of

those transactions.

>> So, those transactions would today

happen through a card and in this case

they would still happen through a card.

Uh but you delegate all the complex

stuff to an agent to do for you, but

it's still going through the card

network.

Now there's a different world adjacent

to this um that lives in the world of

B2B payments. So one company to another.

So today when a company consumes let's

say digital advertising space they buy

that. So the way this goes is today you

have some sort of contract contract with

the digital agent company and these are

aggregated payments and they happen in a

bulk and then somebody sends an invoice

and it's paid and pretty dated and

pretty uh complicated. You could see a

world where

on a real-time basis of small

microtransactions start to fly where

somebody's consuming digital content,

digital advertising space, a digital

compute uh you know the compute that you

use pay as you go fractions of a dollar

in real time that wouldn't necessarily

go through the system. The system has

not been built. It's been built for

consumer transactions. You can book your

trip. Um, but these transactions can

happen for intercomp payments and we

possibly will use the blockchain for

that. That's instant. It's programmable.

It can just run in the background. It'll

be the operating system of these kind of

payments. So, we're already thinking

about where this is going to go. But the

security standards have to be the same

with wherever technology goes. It really

comes down to trust. The stuff will only

be used. It will scale. And we're in the

business of scale. 120 countries 3 point

I think six billion cards out there or

card numbers rather so we're a scale

player and trust is key so there's an

equivalent of agent pay agent pay for

machines which we just put out we're the

first company that has done that it's

established that potter so how do you

introduce that safety there the

blockchain can be kept as just as safe

as regular payment seems are

are stable coins really going to be

transformational or are nice to of um

the the way I would frame that is

it's not ever to start with the

technology. So this is a tool to solve a

problem. So I would always think about

what's the use case we're talking about.

Is it about personal, you know, is a

personal payment, persontoperson

payment, person in person pays in the

shop and buys something your the trip

example or is this um a uh a payment u

like these machineto-achine payments

that I just talked about. So the answer

is not uniform. Uh we're not solving for

a problem, a consumer buying something.

There's no problem to be solved. So it's

not going to be transformation. It's not

even needed. you gonna do you really

think you're going to go and buy a

coffee with a with a crypto currency?

Why would you do that? So it just works

fine because right now in fact the

crypto companies they're all coming to

us and to have a co-brand so MetaMask

for example you going to go and do a

MetaMask masterard and buy the coffee

that's great.

>> So that vision of crypto supplanting the

dollar I mean that's just pie in the

sky.

>> So stable coins is a is a is an

interesting topic. So there there might

be people that live in countries with

high uh highly fluctuating currencies,

high inflation. They'd rather if you are

a supplier from that country and you're

shipping to another country and you want

to be paid in dollars, perfectly fine.

That is a very specific use case in the

world of generally crossborder uh

payments from one currency to another.

Um that's you know sometimes exotic

currencies. It's hard to to make these

payments, find the other party, have

predictable pricing, transparency. how

this is going to work. You could use uh

stable coins for that. So you turn the

dollar into stable coins and you turn

into fiat on the other side and this can

be pretty instant. So there are very

specific use cases uh where this will be

a great technology which is exactly why

we're investing in it. We're the

founding partner of open standard uh

which is a big stable coin consortium um

of 140 plus companies that have come

together to say we need a stable coin

that specific purpose of value exchange

and payments not for one to invest and

and use it as an asset. So

back to the answer, transformational,

not transformational. It will enable a

set of use cases that are not properly

enabled today. That's what it will do.

And we're all about choice and payments.

So we keep heavily investing in the

space.

>> Lastly, uh you know, if you look back at

the the tenures of Mastercard CEOs, I

mean, they're lengthy tenures, and I

hope you're here for a long time,

>> right?

>> Let's say for the next

>> I wonder where you're going to go with

this.

>> No, no, it's going to be good. I swear

it's going to be very this is going to

be very favorable. Let's say you're

around leading this company for another

5 to 10 years. 10 years from now,

>> what will be that next chapter or the

next stamp you will have left on

Mastercard?

>> So, I want to go come back to our

strategy to to answer that question.

>> I'm assuming you're going to be here for

another 10 years. Thank you. [laughter]

So um from from a strategy perspective

it's about we we have to have all

relevant payment choices that exist and

wherever the next payment choice goes

whatever is the technology reimagining

tech out how do you move money and we

will continue to do that and we will

continue to do the same thing in 10

years whatever we cannot imagine what

comes after digital assets and stable

coin whatever the next thing is we will

be there when it comes to ensuring that

a masterard payment is always the safest

and smartest payments that will also be

there in 10

The question about trust. The biggest

promise of our brand is that wherever

you see the Mastercard logo, you have to

never wor worry that you're protected.

The merchant, the shop, the company will

be paid and the person who is paying if

something goes wrong will not be liable.

Those are all the things that going to

be standard. The underlying technology

will change more diversification. But we

will always make sure as a company that

we're not going after the latest fad and

maybe we add this product. We always

come back to fundamental underlying

trends that will also be true in 10

years from now. Safety security will

always matter. So we have a big part of

our business in safety security and

insights will always matter. Everybody

in who is has anything to do with the

digital economy wants one thing to use

that data to make better decisions and

serve their customers better. So those

are the two pillars of our strategy.

I've not even said to you what we're

actually going to be doing differently.

>> Well, you could you could I believe that

these things hold true also in 10 years

from now and that is a very strong

strategy. We have you know been adapting

our strategy over the last two investor

days a little bit here and there but

fundamentally that's a huge opportunity

insights cyber security and providing

payment choices because that drives and

oper you know we're the operating system

of uh digital economy with that one

thing though that will be a significant

shift in balance of our business in 10

years from now is that payments that

relate to businesses and small

businesses today they're fairly

antiquated. They live in a world of

still some screen uh green screens. You

you can't believe it. Um ERP systems

that are in the back every you know

there's a change in generation of

treasurers and people in companies that

see this and say why is this so

different in my personal life? So I

think we're going to see a massive wave

of u rejuvenation

um in corporate payments. So our

business will shift to have a much

larger part of corporate payments in

particular small business. This is

great. So how big how big is the

partnership to to Mastercard? Like why

do you have these partnerships? I mean

of course I've seen you on McLaren,

you're involved with them. Like what do

they do for the business?

>> Our sponsorships are a way for us to

make priceless experiences available for

card holders. you know, a partner as

creative as McLaren, their interest in

the sport is to excite more people to

become a fan of the sport, not

necessarily even their team. Obviously,

they prefer McLaren over some other

team. Um, but so we are global consumer

brand, 3.6 billion cards out there. So,

the global reach and the fascination of

the sport, they go well together. So

this joint advertising, joint marketing,

fan experiences, they do a lot of videos

and they do surprise show ups whereas a

bunch of fans somewhere and suddenly

Oscar walks through the curtain like oh

my god. So [laughter]

um so they're very creative partnership.

>> How did you get into this field like

when you were a kid? Like did you I mean

>> did I wake up

payments are so exciting like I'm the

CEO of Master like where where did that

even come from?

>> In hindsight it was the right time at

the right place. I had a conversation

with my predecessor who I used to work

with at a bank. We both worked at the

same bank and he became the CEO elect of

Mastercard and said, "Do you want you

want to join and we do payments?"

And my initial reaction was not like,

"Yeah, this is great." [laughter]

And uh I think he conveyed in many

different ways that that would be stupid

not to do it. And uh I uh I made a

decision and then never looked back.

It's uh it's fascinating because we

truly we power economies. So when we

show up somewhere, there's never a

question of what we do makes sense.

There's a lot of conversation about

credit cards and we don't do lending. We

don't set interest rates. We make sure

that money flows and your hard money is

protected as it flows.

>> I've learned not to call it plumbing,

>> right? Yes. Exactly. Technical term.

Good. Good to see you. I appreciate I

appreciate