The Transcripts, Transcripts
Mastercard Incorporated (MA) Michael Miebach presents at J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media & Communications Conference (Transcript)
Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) Michael Miebach presents at J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media & Communications Conference May 22, 2023 10:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Michael Miebach – Chief Executive Officer
Conference Call Participants
Tien-tsin Huang – JP Morgan
Tien-tsin Huang
Alright. I think we can get started. Thanks everybody for joining. My name is Tien-Tsin Huang. I follow the Payments and IT Services sector, and super, super excited to have Mastercard with us. Michael Miebach, CEO, and I was just talking, Michael, I think we haven’t had you on stage here before, I’ve always respected Michael at time. He started this transition, we’ve seen a lot of change on the payment side from a leadership perspective. You had big shoes to fill with, Ajay, we know that. And you’ve done an amazing job in a short period, so I was really excited to catch up with you. Thank you for being here.
Michael Miebach
Thank you for having me. It is exciting to come out in person. This is indeed the first time. When you think about when I took the role, three years ago, President, initially and then CEO. This was two weeks before U.S. lock down. So, there was a lot of reasons not to be here. I’m happy I’m here now.
Question-and-Answer Session
Q – Tien-tsin Huang
I know and I was thinking, I remember sharing the story with you, coming in at that time, not easy.
Michael Miebach
Yes.
Tien-tsin Huang
But here we are and things have been doing great. So, I thought we’d start with that. If that’s okay, you’ve been in the seat for a couple of years now, we’ve been through a lot of different things and themes and we even have looming recession, that kind of thing.
Michael Miebach
Right.
Tien-tsin Huang
So, tell us about the journey. What are you proud of? The accomplishments and what are some areas of improvement in your mind?
Michael Miebach
Right. So, no need to go through the journey over the last three years on the topline events we’re all aware. But, when I stepped into this, the immediate ask was by our customers, by our investors. Okay. How do you deal with the situation? Were your revenue gets immediately impacted in a rather severe fashion? So, crisis response, meet our customers where they are, tweak investment appetite and expense management to appetite in the market, be agile and all of that. And in the leadership transition, that removed all other priorities that might be there, post the leadership transition, which is simply let’s just get on with it. So, I think that first year was pretty good.
In 2021 when we looked ahead, we felt there’s enough line-of-sight to give you all a view of how we see the next three years play out. So, November 10, we articulated our three year performance goals, and we took our strategy, long standing strategy of focusing on the core payments business and growing that and diversifying that and specified it out a bit because we felt we needed very particular focus in post pandemic recovery.
So, focus on, you know, those priorities, we keep talking about them all the time, like a mantra. And that’s my design, expand in payments, extending our services and then embracing the new network opportunities that are out there. So, if I take that as a scorecard just to answer your question is, in terms of what’s going well on the core payments opportunity and card-based payments, accelerated secular shift, we were there to take advantage of. You’ve seen the wins, and that’s a lot in that space. So that’s looking good.
On the new flows where we said where else next payments do we need to be, where do we want to be, we were very deliberate to call out four flows and said, this should be a combination of target market expansion and spaces where there is somebody that’s willing to pay for a problem to be resolved for them, and our tools being available and relevant to solve those problems. And we call it commercial POS, accounts — B2B accounts payable, Bill Pay and disbursements and remittances. That scorecard pretty, pretty good, particularly on the card based side tremendous momentum, because nothing needed to be invented. We didn’t really need to convince customers. And some of the longer term stuff like B2B accounts payable that is just a longer game.
So I think fundamentally looking good on the scorecard side, services has been tremendous. Services carried today through the initial days of COVID, but it keeps being a massive differentiator for us, it’s a unique portfolio. So, you take all of that. I think it’s — I’m obviously biased, but I think it’s a pretty decent scorecard —
Tien-tsin Huang
Sure.
Michael Miebach
For the last two years considering everything that is going on. In all of this, what really mattered was continuous agility, because we thought we’re through COVID and then Russia happed. We thought you’re through that and banking crisis comes along. So, agility and culture matters. So, just last year, we spent some time to reset our culture statement, with a lot of focus on speed. So, the headline for us on culture statement is create value obviously, grow together.
Now that is maybe less obvious, this is co-creation with our customers and then it’s moved fast. Moved fast because that’s what’s happening right now and then that’s how we’re winning with fintechs and so forth. So overall more work to do always. This work never ends, but the tailwind plays in for us and remain agile because the next thing is for sure going to happen, whatever it might be.
Tien-tsin Huang
Yes. No, speed matters and it does feel like you’re moving a lot quicker and the market does demand that.
Michael Miebach
Yes. Correct.
Tien-tsin Huang
But before we get into some of the frameworks of what you just laid out, let’s talk about the macro for a second. I know you have a great view of the consumer and business spending, etcetera. What can you tell us, if you maybe walk around the globe a little bit? Is there anything to learn or share, in terms of health of the consumer?
Michael Miebach
I mean we are in a unique position to feel the pulse of the consumer around the world. So, we have a good part of the economy represented in our data. The headline remains if you just look the last numbers that shared with you guys, the consumer is remarkably resilient and would we have expected that six months ago? There was certainly a lot of views, but it keeps happening quarter-after-quarter, and if you look across the world, the story is remarkably similar. United States, you see solid growth, some recent moderation, tax refunds, gas prices and so forth. Europe, has been surprisingly outperforming. The mild winter I think has helped. So that is solid growth out over in Europe. That’s looking good. Latin America, has similar situation, Brazil showing strength. That’s a large market for us, so we love to see that.
And then Asia, we spent a bit of time in the last earnings call on Asia, talking to you about China, and there’s still a cross border recovery opportunity in China, the outbound is up around 65% versus pre-crisis level and then you have the inbound at under 45%. So that’s tremendous opportunity. But South Korea is also doing well. ASEAN, is doing well. You look around, I’m leaving for the Middle East tonight and if you look at consumer spending in the Middle East, that is strong.
So, there isn’t really dramatic difference, but there’s a few unique events by different parts of the world. You just refer to, Tien-Tsin, when you reference the banking situation. So, that’s particular U.S. particularly pronounced in the U.S. We obviously had some wobbles in Europe as well and there’s a debt ceiling conversation. So, we have to be vigilant. That whole point about agility and reacting that I just mentioned earlier is not stopping, more of the same happens. So, we just keep our three strategic priorities in mind, but keep the expenses as flexible as possible, because you never know what’s going to happen going forward.
Tien-tsin Huang
Yes.
Michael Miebach
That’s a landscape.
Tien-tsin Huang
Good. No, it’s important, look stability has been happening there. We’re definitely watching what’s around the corner, but —
Michael Miebach
Right.
Tien-tsin Huang
Like I said, the pillars of Mastercard are very well known and sensible.
Michael Miebach
Happy you say that.
Tien-tsin Huang
So, before again, it’s a tech conference, pretty big audience here, I know I asked you the question, moving away from payments a little bit, Michael —
Michael Miebach
Right.
Tien-tsin Huang
Around generative AI on the earnings call, just to mix it up a little bit.
Michael Miebach
Right.
Tien-tsin Huang
But it is a big topic. People have asked me to ask you about it. It seems like a wealth of opportunity, given the data that Mastercard sees to take advantage of this theme of generative AI, how do you see it sitting in the CEO seat?
Michael Miebach
Right. So, one might expect, oh my god, large language models are coming and so this is like a big revelation and all of that. Well, there’s some novelty in that, but, AI has been central for our product set and our services set for the last decade, including generative AI.
Tien-tsin Huang
Okay.
Michael Miebach
So, this isn’t kind of the latest insight by anybody. We use AI for our products and services, where we expose to our customers, particularly on the fraud side, AI models that — what do they do? For example, they figure out, is the transaction that Tien-Tsin, has just made, a genuine one? How do we avoid false positives and fraud models for us and for our customers? So, long standing practice in AI. We use it internally as well as an optimization tool, a productivity tool, for example, everything that’s known in Mastercard how do you expose that to our sales force in the best possible way. So, content generation is what you would expect, generative AI is used for.
So, I’m not putting it to the side as in we’ve been there, done that. But it is not new, it’s a muscle that has been trained. And the message to our employees is, we have to lean in. We got to see where this is going. We have to be ahead of the curve. So we continuously invest. We’ve made a few investments in acquisitions in the AI space with Brighterion. That was a little further back. We just bought Baffin Bay and that is a cybersecurity company, that’s using AI in a big way, so leaning in. But one has to always remember, our brands the — our brand, the interlocking circle stands for trust, it stands security. We’re not just a tech company, we’re a tech company plus. So, when this transaction happens, you can rely on it.
So, how do you ensure that in a world of AI-driven models explainability, why does the model make the decision that it makes, how about biases and so forth. So, we engage with a set of companies, like-minded companies around to make sure that responsible AI is the focus. We raise our voice to that and to our employees. We have said, experiment, as you like, don’t do it in production, and here’s the guardrails. So, positive opportunity there and we will be there. We have to.
Tien-tsin Huang
Well said, I think, yes. Dial tone quality of payments is big, but the governance behind it is significant, so you can’t —
Michael Miebach
Right. Right.
Tien-tsin Huang
Can’t mess with that. Okay. Good. No. Thanks for sharing that. So, let’s get into your strategic priorities and think about payments. You mentioned wins and that I feel like I’m always asking you, Michael, about why does Mastercard win?
Michael Miebach
I love that question.
Tien-tsin Huang
Well, I mean, like I said, it’s —
Michael Miebach
Who doesn’t like winning? But there’s a good set of answers to that.
Tien-tsin Huang
Yes.
Michael Miebach
First of all, we put focus to try to win what matters to win, and not to win everything, because the world is very large in payment. You could go into all sorts of direction. So, it’s very focused wins that we have.
Tien-tsin Huang
So, selective wins.
Michael Miebach
Exactly. Exactly. So, the recent examples, I think I gave you actually that answer when you asked the question last time is, it just is still so top of mind and it happened right here in Boston, Citizens.
Tien-tsin Huang
Yes.
Michael Miebach
So the Citizens win is a bit of reflection of our strategy early over to talk about payment services, new networks. So, the proposition here that we made is, we will have — we have a multi-rail offering on the payment side. We have a unique set of services and we have an open banking asset that is particularly geared to banking connectivity in banking solutions in the United States, that is a truly unique portfolio.
So, you got to have the right solutions, but that’s still isn’t the answer. So, solution selling is great, but you have to do it, at the speed of your customer. Where are they going? What do they want to do? What I’ve heard more recently, particularly out of the fintech community, that increasingly so out of financial service, out of banks and so forth is, there’s all this complexity and all this choice that you bring, we love simplicity. So, coming down to simplifying down the solutions in the context of the customer driving for their customer outcome, the Dynamic Yield acquisition, it’s about personalization. In the end, we can say to the customer, we can guarantee a certain outcome to you.
So, right kind of set of solutions, working at the speed of the customer and making things fairly simple to them, because our business is not necessarily their business. They have a different thing in mind, and we are an enabler. I think that, all of that together in the end, focusing on the customer outcome and not having a financially oriented cost optimization conversation is the key.
Tien-tsin Huang
How about serving fintechs? Serving fintech is different than serving traditional banks you mentioned, Citizens.
Michael Miebach
Right.
Tien-tsin Huang
It does feel like you’ve had some good wins on the fintech side. Apple Card is a good example.
Michael Miebach
That’s a very good example. Yes.
Tien-tsin Huang
So, what’s the differentiation there, Michael?
Michael Miebach
These are two different segments, but go around the house, government, different segment yet again, retail and commerce and so forth. There’s a set of segments we have defined, and they all have somewhat different characteristics on what they’re looking for. So, back to what I just said on products and services, they do need different types of services.
Fintech, what was particularly important on fintech is, they come to us oftentimes for a path-to-scale. So, particularly the smaller ones, they come to us for that reason. Neobanks, that want to have a multi-geography expansion strategy, pick a few ones of those in Europe like an N26 or so, there are no cutting across the continent. Take a new bank, one of the largest neobanks in the world, and they want to grow up beyond Brazil.
Tien-tsin Huang
Yes.
Michael Miebach
Which they are actively doing, and so path-to-scale and speed matters to these people, I think that is some of the — one of the key differentiators here. And, this sounds like we help them get better. But yet, a really important part about working with fintechs is, small and big, is they make us better as well, because their focus on consumer experience is much, much elevated versus what we traditionally have been doing as an industry.
Look at the Apple Card experience. I mean this is digital first. It’s amazing. It’s a digital first program now for us around the world. So this goes both ways and it’s a very important part of our customer relationships, not uniquely better but an important element and been a tremendous growth driver. That’s where a lot of the growth in payments comes and they elevate the whole ecosystem as well. So, when you think about acceptance solutions that are created by these folks, etcetera. So, I love banks, I love fintechs. I have to love them all and I do that.
Tien-tsin Huang
So, driving acceptance, you mentioned it there, Michael. So it feels like every year we’re talking about bigger and bigger, bigger acceptance number, both in developing as well as developed worlds. So is there more expansion opportunity from an acceptance standpoint?
Michael Miebach
We could have said here five years ago and had exactly this dialogue I think I knew you by then, five years ago, I was just in the product role. And we were around about somewhere in 50 million acceptance point at that time, and it feels like a huge number. And nothing, there is no other payment, no other industry really that has that kind of reach in payment other than the networks. And would I have guessed it’s a 100 million five years later, no, but it is. And we just announced that as you know in the last earnings call, it’s 102 million acceptance points. So there is this aspect of the value of the open leap system, the larger it gets, the more people see benefit in it. So therefore, the answer is very, very clearly, yes.
But there is a demand for ubiquity and scale predictable experiences to consumers go to as many places as you can and there’s a similar reliable experience that’s really the value proposition. But then you have to have the tools to enable that. So one is would people like more ways to pay in a simple and safe way? Yes. But how do we create that, contactless, that’s a really important one. On the contactless side, we’re now, I think like 58% of all switched in-person transactions are contactless, even Germany has now accelerated rapidly around contactless.
Take things like Tap on Phone. It’s probably the first setting I’m sitting in a long time, but there’s no phone on the table. But if there were one here, I would have pointed to it and say, this could be an accepted device. So Tap on Phone started off as a certification and all of that. Today, this is reaching a point where on Android, you have some of the largest players like Stripe engaging on it. You have Apple with Tap to iPhone, which is now coming to life. We took that whole proposition and put it into our cloud commerce cloud enabled solution, which is now accelerating the whole thing.
Imagine where this could go. Any phone in this room could be an acceptance device. And then you go forward and you take this into, with tokenization technology, any device could be a connected device and enabling commerce. So, there’s just technology there, there’s demand there, and I think it’s a tremendous opportunity for continued growth.
Tien-tsin Huang
Yeah. No, agreed. So given all of this acceptance and a lot of payment credentials out there, Michael, I cannot ask you around regulation, Israel. And so what’s happening there in the U.S. or in Russia I’ll let you let you answer. We get a lot of questions on Reg II. And this levelling of the playing field within online debit, which seems like a big opportunity for Mastercard. But love to hear your thoughts. Again, sitting in your seat sitting against across the table from regulators, what are you hearing?
Michael Miebach
Right. So the first thing to say is that at least from my perspective, from our perspective, payments has never been more competitive than it is today. So if you look at in terms of local systems, local payment schemes, government owned systems, that’s a plethora of offerings out there. Some of the differences between these two come to reach. Some of them are international, many more are domestic. So with that landscape, you also seeing this is enhanced through COVID, where the payment industry kept the world going a lot more government interest. And government interest oftentimes comes with regulation. Then we have the whole post-pandemic recovery aspect, inflation in so forth. So regulators are looking at the payment industry as well and saying this is yet another lever that I can look at in my toolset on how I steer my economy.
So there’s interest, there’s focus. We welcome competition, so regulation that creates for a level playing field and welcomes competition is generally a good thing. It’s also actually a helpful thing for newer technologies, think about blockchain based technology with regulation it would probably scale faster than in a world where it’s unclear where regulation is going.
So we’re positively disposed, Reg II very specifically, I mean, what it does is two unaffiliated networks on our current or present transaction, okay. July we will be ready. Our question compliance is always important and is non-negotiable. If you look at that and say the opportunity is a risk, I don’t have a crystal ball here to see where this is going to go, but the focus on cyber security has been our strategy for the longest time.
We have a really unique portfolio. We’re investing in the latest technology always. Not every other competitor has been doing this out there. So this matters particularly for online transaction safety and security. This is where this regulation is hitting, we should be very well positioned. Well, our team is looking at is as an opportunity, we got to play it and see where it goes.
Tien-tsin Huang
Yeah. I mean, we’ve seen, I mean, there’s been so many waves of changes and threats and there’s a lot of talk about disintermediation, right, during the pandemic with —
Michael Miebach
Buy Now Pay Later was —
Tien-tsin Huang
Buy Now Pay Later exactly was a big theme, crypto is definitely faded almost a bad word to talk about now these days. Of course, we’ve overcome that. But we do get questions beyond regulation, right, around Pay by Bank. You mentioned open banking, I know FedNow in the U.S. gets a lot of attention with that coming with real time payments. Same question. How do you see Pay by Bank, FedNow, how does that disrupt or potentially enhance things? I know fraud is very difficult. It seems like opportunity, again, for Mastercard, but I look for your thoughts on it.
Michael Miebach
Yeah. So when it comes to alternative payment solutions of all kinds, they could be a competitive threat. They could, this disintermediate us, if we were just to sit there and do nothing. Emerging technologies, though, we have — we spend a lot of energy in trying to decipher for our customers and our partners, what is a relevant solution that solves a problem, let’s say, of small business? What do we have to invest in so that we have the right kind of solution set for our customers? So we spend a lot of energy in evolving. If you look at the diversification of the Mastercard business over the years, it proves that. And, you know, we’re not just about card payments, because if we were, we would have probably been disintermediated by now, but we’re not. So, that’s been a long journey.
When you look very specifically at some of Buy Now Pay Later, we took the idea and say, this is a great idea. Is my son actually going to use a credit card, I don’t know. He’s 17, so he might want to pay in a different way. That’s fair enough. But what is difficult is if that experience is not repetitive and predictable because it only happens at whatever 15 large merchants and then for the rest it’s something else. So we build it into the network. You all know that and that is now out there as Mastercard instalments. That was one way to deal with that.
FedNow. So this is in the end, it’s a push payment systems, getting money from a to b, where you don’t rely on the wire system, that’s fundamentally a good thing and very common in most countries and not here. So, that is fundamentally good. But the proposition that Mastercard debit brings to make such payments, it comes along with dispute resolutions with liability shift and so forth. So the technology to get money from a to b isn’t a proposition as such. It’s an element. And here we come along and say it is the technology, it’s the franchise that comes with it, it’s the safety security and all of that, together.
So we will compete at the same time. We have a stated multi rail strategy for years. And if you look what you can do with the account or account flows, Pay by Bank, the Pay by Bank solution that we have put out there with Chase is a good example. Uses target market expansions, it flows that are not carted, where we’re using our open banking technology to say, we solve a problem for a bunch of smaller billers that are trying to build their customers and don’t know if there’s a balance on the account. So there’s ways to make money out of that which I think will scale.
In the end, the fundamental underlying point is businesses/merchants as we call them will want to have reach and consumers want something that’s predictable and safe, the two have to go hand in hand. If you have a piece of technology that only gets reached, but it’s not a good experience for the consumer that matches with what other alternatives they have, it’s going to be hard to scale it. So we’ll see where it goes. We lean in to real time payments anyway and find the right solutions that we believe actually will scale.
Tien-tsin Huang
Yeah. And there’s a lot of opportunities to scale right beyond person to merchant type flows. I think you led with it, Michael, and you’re going into commercial and remittances. There’s a whole host of different new flows. Can you just in B2B, Bill Pay, when I think of Mastercard with RPPS, there’s a lot of things that you did early, right, to go into these areas, which are now becoming more mainstream. Maybe I should say that. So I’m curious, again, same question. How are you prioritizing that? What should we be watching in these new flows?
Michael Miebach
You initially when in 2017, we said, okay, there is a massive volume of flows beyond cards. It was an outrageously large number, $235 trillion, we said okay, fine. How do you eat an elephant? I want to buy that at a time. So we called out very specifically these flow flows.
Let me just call out — take two of them. —
Tien-tsin Huang
Please.
Michael Miebach
Just to talk a little bit about that. So commercial POS, that’s a set of flows that are happening between commercial entities, sometimes between consumers and commercial entities. And you can go after them through different tools. We have the whole tool set in our multi real strategy, but a good chunk is cards. So we don’t have to go and invent something. Just simply focus and adjusting our solutions across T&E, fleet card, purchasing cards, VCNs, small business cards, you name it. There’s a full menu on it. This is a tremendous growth opportunity. We gave you a number in the last earnings call, 21% year-over-year. It’s there.
And with consumers experiencing a very, very much increased digital experiences in their life. So the world is getting more digital for everybody as they go and go into their job and then suddenly that is not digital. This comes like why? So there’s appetite for these kind of solutions as well as all of our lives are changing. So that’s a tremendous opportunity. Disbursements and remittances is another one. We bought Transfast a few years back. It’s been a tremendous asset. This is a fast growing space. And here again, I think we have a unique set, we have a unique reach in terms of cards, bank accounts, and mobile wallets. So we don’t need to invent anything either and the demand is there. So these are two sets of flows that we are not traditionally been in. This is not P2M stuff, but we have what it takes and the numbers showed.
Tien-tsin Huang
Yeah.
Michael Miebach
So, the counter account part where you go beyond cards, that’s a little bit of a longer play. So the B2B accounts payable that’s a two sided network you have to build. It took us kind of like 30 years to build the P2M two sided network that will take a little longer. But do I have conviction that there is problem to solve and we have a good set of assets for that absolutely. So we will keep at that.
Tien-tsin Huang
Yeah. No. I mean, I think I always joke. I think I wrote a paper for my boss around B2B payments 22 years ago, the numbers were —
Michael Miebach
Were you largely, right?
Tien-tsin Huang
Well, I think we can basically copy and paste it and still say it’s big opportunity is still relatively are penetrated, but it does feel like it’s moving with some momentum now because of better software and Mastercard working with a lot of different providers. And it does feel like learning from this whole software theme, which is my I know we’re getting out of time here. I want to make sure we hit this. Learning from a lot of these software companies that are going after payments, Michael, services, value added services, expanding ARPU in the words of software is becoming more important. And now you’re disclosing value added services specifically –
Michael Miebach
Correct.
Tien-tsin Huang
For Mastercard. So for those that are less close to Mastercard, this does feel very important in terms of an opportunity to ties whether it be the data or the transactions or the scale or the relationships with banks, non-banks merchants, you name it. So just tell us a little bit more why is Mastercard be a winner on this whole value added services initiative?
Michael Miebach
Right. So first of all, how do services matter for us? Revenue growth enhancement. So this is a separate revenue pool. It’s diversification of revenues, again, separate pools that come from a different source, not all of them are transaction related and it’s a diversification game for us compared to other providers in similar space like ours, unique service set helps us get into the payment transaction because we make them safer in a better way, we make them smarter and so forth. So it’s all interlinked, services matter for payments and vice versa.
From a growth perspective and how this matters compared to SaaS companies and other service companies, if you just look at the competitive landscape, there, like who’s out there that is competing versus us and how we are positioned. We’re positioned very uniquely, right, between payments, and value add services. We’re neither nor we have the data that makes our services enhanced from day one.
And then you look at the various players in on the services side, you have loyalty companies, you have managed services companies, you have consulting companies, we do all of that, and we provide that to our customer set as a pack solution as I mentioned earlier.
The go-to-market, we’re getting better to take all of that into platform based solutions. So it’s much easier for us to deploy that through cloud enables men, service enables men, different type of connections that are not relying solely on payments. In the end with this strategy, we can sell services to payments companies and we can sell payments to services companies. So it’s a segment diversification strategies at the same time. What do we have? Two big areas, cyber, all range of cyber solutions from prevention, detection, identification technology. I could go through the whole menu, but I will not do that now. It’s just a — it’s a large menu. And on the data inside side, we got loyalty solutions, we have data analytics solutions, consulting, marketing services and of late personalization.
Personalization is particularly interesting one, if you have combination of services and payments in the end what one — what our customers want to do is offer to you the right kind of payment offer and purchasing opportunity at the right channel. How do you do that? Personalization is the way to take all of this technology and to deliver it to you at the same point.
So that is services for us. It’s very unique, so it doesn’t really play on the competitive landscape of the services side or the payment side. I think we’re pretty much a unique player there and it’s been a tremendous story, more to invest. So you will see us investing in that continuously.
Tien-tsin Huang
Yeah. So lots going on obviously within payments in the macro world, you’re dealing with the new services initiative that we can hold you accountable for because you share the data, which is great, so thank you for that. So, we’ll end on this in the last minute or so. What do you — what would you rank as most exciting for you from a technology perspective, Michael?
Michael Miebach
Right. I think this point about personalization, it points to a world where we are going to see a lot more social and immerse commerce happening. So this will be entirely new environments straight out of your chat, you will buy something and the offer will come. I find that personally very exciting, and that comes along with the physical and digital world merging into as well. So that whole space of smarter experiences that people will want to use and businesses will want to use. There’s so much technology in there. But it’s not just technology, it’d big trust questions in that as well. That’s a big one.
I think the whole point, the whole space of blockchain based technology. It’s going to be very interesting. This is helping to connect people that don’t know each other in businesses. It’s trust enhancing. The crypto winter hasn’t helped, but I think we were going to find a way through that with government providing better guard rail. So that is for sure exciting. We touched on AI, but it’s a more fundamental technology, but what will AI do, generative AI in combination with 5G, 6G, cloud, edge computing. Back to the first point about intelligent experiences, you can deliver them anywhere, any which way you like through that foundational technology. So that’s a little bit of a triangle on the technology side that I personally find very exciting and our Chief Innovation Officer gets really worked up about.
Tien-tsin Huang
Yeah. And then I appreciate you taking a product first view on all of this, Michael. Well, thank you for the time. Always enjoy chatting with you. I know you’re very, very busy. You have a lot of international travel coming up ahead, so safe travels to you as well. Thank you.
Michael Miebach
Thank you, Tien-tsin.