Thanks everyone for joining us today. I hope you're finding that the conference is providing some proof points that, as we said, you know, Fintech is finding its mojo again. Thank you all for being here. We are delighted to have as our keynote today, our good friends at Mastercard. From Mastercard, we have Raj Seshadri, who is the President of Data & Services, joining us today.
Thank you, first of all, very much for being here. I know you have a very busy schedule, so we really appreciate it. What I thought we would do, you know, just to start off, you know, Data & Services is an incredibly important part of the Mastercard story, but I don't think a lot of people have had an opportunity maybe to spend time with you. If you would give a little bit about your background, and ultimately, the responsibilities that you have here within the Data & Services, and then ultimately, what kind of falls underneath that. I think it's evolved a little bit over time, but, that would be a great starting point.
Yeah. Thank you, Dan. Thank you for having me here. By the way, it's nice to be back fully in person.
I know.
Together is priceless.
Right out of the gates, she starts with this. All right, I like this.
You know, my background, I have a very checkered past. I was a physicist, I was in consulting, I was a marketer. I've worked in various aspects of various businesses. What I like about Data & Services is, it brings all of these things together into one business unit, which is really nice. What is Data & Services? The overall mission that we have, I'll start there, is to help our customers make smarter decisions with better outcomes, both in how they run their businesses and how they engage with their consumers. What does that mean?
We have a variety of capabilities or services, you know, underneath that umbrella. We have a very large consulting firm, professional services organization. We have innovation services, we have insights, we have analytics that do, you know, benchmarking, targeting models, things like that. We have software as a service platforms, like our business intelligence platform or Test & Learn for experimentation.
Mm-hmm.
We have a loyalty business that's very large. We have capabilities in marketing services. Most recently, last year, we bought Dynamic Yield, which takes us into personalization. It's a variety of different service capabilities that underlie this mission. The way we go to market is we put the customer at the center, think about the particular problem or challenge or opportunity they're going after, and then figure out how to help them, you know, get there faster, better, more efficiently, more effectively. Sometimes the answer is one of our services.
Mm.
Sometimes it's a combination. When it's a combination, we snap it together like, you know, Legos to create what they need. At the end of the day, you know, the way I think about it is, we measure our success as Data & Services based on the value that we add to our customers. If they find us valuable, then we're doing the right thing.
Yep. Yep. If we take a step back before we get in the weeds, on all of these areas that you're responsible for, can you talk about the journey that Mastercard has been on? You know, the distinctions that Services has brought to the company, you know, when you think about competing against other incumbents, so to speak, in the industry? It's been a long time coming, I think, really.
Yeah, it's been a journey. It's, it continues to be a journey. We've been in services, we first got into services roughly a decade ago.
Yeah.
When you think about history, I think in 2012, services was something like a sixth of our total net revenues.
Yeah.
In 2021, we disclosed that it was a third, and it's obviously, it continues to grow, right? It grows really rapidly. It grows faster than payments. So it's been a journey, and today, when we look at our strategy, you know, we have three pillars. We have payments, we have services, and we have new networks. Services are pretty unique because they not only drive services, they also enable payments in new networks. They, you know, increase the value of payments, they help our new networks, you know, get to market with use cases faster. Then we also, within the services pillar, think about new segments, you know, new solutions.
Mm
that we bring to market. It's really, you know, it's very core to Mastercard's in the long-term growth. The journey, actually. When I say services, by the way, I should clarify. When I say services here, I mean Data & Services, which is what we just talked about, which I manage, as well as, you know, our cybersecurity and intelligence services, which we call C&I for short.
Yes.
processing gateway, it's all about services. When I then think about D&S and the journey in D&S, it's a variety of different journeys.
Okay.
We have services that came out of consumer card. That's how we got started in services. Some of our fraud services came out of there. Data & S ervices, our consulting, our marketing services came out of card. Loyalty came out of card, consumer card. There were others that we built organically. Our insights business, our analytics business, where we, you know, leverage the proprietary data that we have.
Mm-hmm.
Were built organically. Some of our business information, platforms were built organically. We also acquired, I mentioned Dynamic Yield, which we acquired last year.
Mm-hmm.
Our Test & Learn capability came from an acquisition of APT in 2016.
Yeah, I remember that.
We bought SessionM in the, in loyalty, literally right before the pandemic. We've also had a set of services that we built because customers have come to us saying: "Hey, you do that well. Can you help us do it?
Mm-hmm.
A good example is innovation.
Mm.
Mastercard is exceptionally innovative. That's the fun part of being in Mastercard. We had customers that came to us and said: "How do you innovate? What techniques do you use?" We packaged it up and helped our customers innovate using some of our, we call it Labs as a Service.
Got it.
Innovation Services. The each service has had a different journey or a different source or origin. You know, going forward, they all have really interesting journeys ahead of them.
Yeah.
Now, trends in the market as we see what our customers need, as we see opportunities out there where we could create or co-create, we're constantly investing and evolving, the portfolio.
Yeah. You know, it's interesting, in terms of, you know, covering, let's just say, broadly, the networks over the years. It's almost embarrassing to think about how long I've actually been covering the networks for years. The point of that is that there's a distinction in terms of you bringing services kind of separately and distinct to the market, as its own entity to be sold to those end clients. Was that, did that just evolve naturally into that, or was that deliberate because you felt like that could be a competitive advantage versus maybe others that might have had more data?
Yeah, it's both natural and deliberate, right? In the early years, it was natural, but then it became very deliberate because For two reasons: one, we want to make sure that this is a business that, you know, adds value to customers.
Yep.
That's valued by customers.
Yep.
We wanted to make sure, you know, we could capture its full potential, right? To make sure that we could have it support payments, support new networks, but also in places where it goes beyond payments and it brings new customers into Mastercard. You know, want to be able to unleash that as well.
Yep. Can you talk to some proof points or maybe tease out some real-life examples that helps people understand where the services part of the business is bringing, you know, enhanced value to the overall Mastercard picture?
Sure. Happy to do that. I mean, if you think about the three pillars, the pieces of Mastercard and the overall picture, that I might refer to are the payments pillar-
Yep.
The new networks pillar.
Yep.
We can come back to the services pillar. It adds a lot of value to both, right? A core, the origin of services and a core tenet or, you know, goal that we have in services is to enhance the value of payments.
Yep.
In terms of that, in the payments pillar, it, you know, obviously, we help our customers acquire consumers, grow their portfolios, increase spend, reduce fraud, et cetera, optimize their portfolios. There are lots of examples of that. You know, I was recently looking at a cashback offer campaign that we did, and we found that the redeemers had 2 times the transaction volume of the non-redeemers. You know, things like contactless adoption. Our services business helps issuers think about the strategy when you first get to contactless in the market.
Mm
Like in this market a few years ago, think about, we helped them implement contactless because you've actually got to do the work to be ready for it, issue it, think about offers to consumers to encourage that first tap, because it's a new behavior. Think about how you build on that behavior and then eventually optimize the portfolio so you maximize contactless. Those are all examples in the payments space. Then in the open, you know, in the, in the new networks space, there's open banking, there's identity. Let me use open banking as the example. You know, in services, we help consumers and small businesses access loans faster.
Mm.
That's something that we, you know, do with the open banking capabilities. We have. Oh, here's a good example. We were working with a bank in Central and Eastern Europe, and we wanted to capture the opportunity in open banking. We started with our innovation services, where we ideated, you know, came up with 12 ideas, and then we, with them, prioritized what might make sense to pursue further, brought it down to three, and then we did prototypes and testing. What ended up is one product that's in the market and is being used today, which is a multi-bank app. It allows the consumer across all of the banks under this umbrella institution to be able to look at all their accounts and look at their full financial picture and move money around.
Mm-hmm.
That's a good example of the open banking space.
Yeah, that's great.
It's a force multiplier. I would think of services as a force multiplier that drives payments and drives open banking.
How should we be thinking about the opportunity from a cross-selling perspective versus just net new business? Like, how often does services actually bring someone into Mastercard for the first time or flip a portfolio, said differently, versus just having this cross cross-selling flywheel, really? It, it clearly enhances both. It's reinforcing in both. I'd just be interested to know your thoughts on that.
Yeah, it does both, right? The reality is, it's both. If there's an existing payments relationship, the services help, you know, help the customer achieve better top line and bottom line growth. It reinforces that and sort of I'd say it's something that's adjacent to payments that helps the customer maximize their opportunity in payments.
Yep.
On the other side, the times when it's standalone, in fact, we have services-only customers that lead to payments. A good example is, in this country's Gap. We were working with them in Test & Learn.
Mm-hmm.
For many years in their core business. They were very, you know, great Test & Learn relationship, working closely with them. When the co-brand portfolio came up, we flipped it. We flipped it to Mastercard, and that was, you know, the payments business came on the backs of the services business in that case. Both directions.
Yep. Yep. No, that makes total sense. You mentioned this earlier, you know, services has grown faster than payments, which is interesting because you think of Mastercard first as payments and services maybe second. From a growth perspective, it's really evolved into an enormous growth engine, with an improving margin profile all along the way, I believe. The question is, why do you think that would be sustainable from here? I could see kind of how it grew into the leadership growth spot today, but I'm wondering if it can sustain that, and what are some of the major drivers, you know, big kind of tectonic shifts in the world that you see that would be supportive of that?
Yes, you know, I think it's worth stepping back and thinking about why Mastercard is in services, right? What are the drivers?
Okay.
Our decision to be in services? Because that answers-
Yep
T he question in some ways, because, when I think about it, you know, we talked about growth. Services do drive growth. Services are growing faster than payments, but there's also this virtuous cycle. where when we drive services and the customer's portfolios do better, it drives payments and payment flows and payment revenues for us. It helps the customer win, it helps our payments revenue grow, our payments flow grow, which means we have more services to apply to those payments and more to innovate with in terms of what those payments bring to us. It's a, it's a virtuous circle. There's the growth reason, and then there are the other reasons you were just alluding to. There's the differentiation, right?
Where it helps us grow our portfolios really well with customers, makes the relationship sticky, helps us flip portfolios, retain portfolios. It differentiates the payments business relative to, you know, our competitors in payments. There's diversification, which we were just talking about with the Gap example, where we have, whether it is, you know, looking at, issuers beyond payments, where a lot of our services are relevant to them beyond payments.
Mm-hmm.
Or even looking beyond issuers to, you know, acquirers, to merchants. In the services business, we think about all the different verticals of merchants differently because, you know, their core businesses are different. A grocer is different from a retailer, is different from an airline, is different from a CPG.
Mm-hmm.
You know, company. Providing, you know, services to them, the same set of services just applied in a different context to a different use case. Governments, local governments, city, state, federal governments, central banks, our fintechs, neobanks. It really is diversifying Mastercard. The customers coming into Mastercard as a result of services. It opens the doors, you know, to all of them.
Yeah.
I'd say there's another reason which is, you know, talent. A third of all new joiners to Mastercard join through services.
Wow!
A number of them join through our professional services organization, advisors. As they grow in their careers and as they develop, you know, we do this for Mastercard. They feed the rest of Mastercard. They end up leading portions of Mastercard. We have a number of leaders who grew up in the services, in the business. All of these things, this is why we're in services, and this is.
Yeah.
Why services are so important to us.
Yeah. It's interesting you bring up talent. Like, a lot of times when you're going after new talent, whether it's engineering talent or AI talent, or we'll get into some of those topics, too. Like, a lot of tech, pure tech companies have, like, removed the fear of failure, so to speak. They, these new joiners are a little more joined into those types of environments. It sounds like maybe services offer some of those same attributes. What would some of those be as to why you're bringing so many people into that organization?
Hey, listen, we're very innovative. We, you know, we do share that, which is we experiment a lot. We not only have products like Test & Learn that encourage experimentation and measurement. The reason we're innovative is we, you know, we try and think and test, and we're constantly evolving.
Yeah.
You know what I'd say is, the talent pool is remarkable. It's amazing. We have locations. We have about 16 hubs and then spokes off those hubs. If you look at the talent, the young talent that's there, it is, you know, they're from 80 different nationalities. They speak about 70 different languages. What that means is, you know, we operate in 210 countries, as you know, so, and territories. It just means no matter where the customer is, no matter what environment they're in, no matter what language or regulatory regime they have to work under, we have people who can understand it and who can work there. We have deep subject matter experts, and we have people who are very local, and that helps a lot.
Yeah. No, I bet it does. When you think about how the products are being utilized by clients, are there distinctions between geographies? Like, do we do it differently in the United States versus people in the U.K. versus in Asia-Pac and Latin America? Like, are there distinctions about what's important to be drawn out of services?
Yeah.
Can you talk to those?
Yeah, sure. Listen, we build our services at scale, at global scale.
Mm-hmm.
That's what Mastercard brings, right? It's one of the key things it brings, is the ability to deliver these things at scale and in a way that a customer in a local geography might not be able to access in the same way. We build at scale, you know, the way we take it to market is in a very local, contextual way, where it's really about that particular customer, that particular challenge, that particular opportunity. That's really how we, you know, we operate, which is why having these global capabilities is important, having the people on the ground to translate is translate it is important. The other thing I'd say is, you know, the thing that makes our services distinctive...
In our services, whether it's consulting, marketing, loyalty, we compete with an entirely different set of competitors.
Yeah.
We compete well with them. The reason we compete well with them is because all these services have data-driven insights embedded in them, and those are, you know, unique to Mastercard and what we bring to the table. If you think about it, the source of that is a vast amount of proprietary data that we have. In consumer card alone, we see something like $125 billion transactions. 3 billion cards in the 210 countries and territories I mentioned.
Right.
There are lots of other types of proprietary data. You know, for a couple decades now, we've spent a lot of time cleansing it, you know, aggregating it, anonymizing it. We're very driven by, you know, our principles around privacy and security. We have hundreds of other third-party sources that we mix in to create, you know, nuances, tease out insights, create relevant data sets.
Mm-hmm.
The quality of our data and the insights that we derive from it are critically important. We're talking about an era where we talk a lot about AI and algorithms. Data quality for that is critical.
Yeah.
We have very high-quality data.
Yeah.
That enables our services. Our, I'd say our secret sauce is those data-driven insights and our talent pool.
Yeah.
That's what really makes our services unique.
Interesting. Have you seen distinctions in terms of clients, maybe by vertical, that are consuming your services in different ways during different economic cycles?
Mm-hmm.
Like, when businesses are distressed, are they doing more of one or another? When things are really great, are they out there constantly testing and learning, and, you know, I'd just be interested to know the spectrum of how that correlates to the macro headwinds.
We have a number of services that are relevant in different ways in different parts of the economic cycle.
Okay.
Dan, I'll tell you, let me draw from my own experience.
Sure.
I took this job in 2020 in January, right? 45 days later, the WHO declares a pandemic.
Yes.
There was a moment where, you know, I looked in the mirror and said, "Wow, what now?" As we reflected on it, we realized that, you know, it was actually the perfect moment for services. Services did very well for Mastercard in 2020, if you go back and look at our results. Why is that? It's because all of a sudden, we were in an environment which was there was a lot of uncertainty. Yesterday's data was irrelevant. It was all about real-time, current data and insights.
Mm-hmm.
Consumer behavior that we used to expect suddenly changed. Each one of us behaved entirely differently, right, once the pandemic hit. Experimentation became very important because you had to very quickly try out different things. The old levers, the old techniques, no longer were relevant. You had to experiment, test, double down on the tests that worked, cut back the tests that didn't, and very rapidly evolve to the right to what worked. That ability to have real-time insights, that ability to experiment and test in real time, the ability to pivot and be agile, is something that was really important and important to Mastercard, but equally important for us to take out to our customers.
We created this program called Recovery Insights across Mastercard, and our focus was to work with customers to help them assess, react, and recover at that time to the pandemic. We did thousands of engagements with, you know, with banks, with retail and commerce players, with governments of various types, and policymakers that were thinking about economic versus healthcare policy. It really, it highlighted the importance of services in all environments.
Mm-hmm.
It really made us realize ourselves how valuable these services are in, you know, in all parts of the economic cycle. That has held true, you know, since then. 2021, 2022 have all been a little different. 2023 is a little different.
Yeah.
We have all these services that are relevant no matter what the environment is.
Yeah. Any insights you could share with us about what you're seeing currently? It doesn't have to be like an April-May trend update, but just are there things that you see inside of your business that are interesting to call out?
you know, the one thing that we see, so we have the Mastercard Economics Institute-
Yeah.
right, which, I think you know about. They put out the economic forecasts and reports, and we put out Mastercard SpendingPulse, which I'm sure you're familiar with.
Oh, yeah.
It's an amazing group, by the way. It's a remarkable group of economists, data scientists, consultants, graphic designers, and they're very good at teasing out the insights and communicating it in simple terms, both orally as well as visually. So spend a lot of time with them. What I, you know, I think this is nothing new. We've said this before, but it remains true. The consumer is really resilient, and, you know, across the globe.
Yeah.
The different markets are growing at different speeds. It's a little, you know, depends on where you are. The exact details are a little different, but overall, the consumer is very resilient, and it's something that we keep a close eye on. I mean, the headwinds, the tailwinds, there are lots of tailwinds, like, you know, many markets, including this one, savings rates are high.
Mm-hmm.
There are more jobs than there are people.
Mm-hmm.
The consumer spending on experiences.
Mm-hmm.
Travel is up, dining is up, you know, dining out, things like going to concerts, entertainment is up. Experiences over things. Before the pandemic, this was true. In the pandemic, things switched to things over experiences. It's now back to experiences.
Mm-hmm.
Consumers are resilient in that way. They're spending a lot. On the other hand, there are headwinds. There's, you know, inflation in different countries, including ours. There's different monetary and fiscal policy, interest rate environments.
Mm-hmm.
We're all keeping an eye on what that does to, you know, consumers, we're keeping an eye on what that does to the banking sector. There are lots of puts and takes, but net-net, if you look at our Mastercard Economics Institute's, you know, what they've put out there, and the conversations we have with them, the consumer is very resilient so far.
Yeah.
Even in uncertain, you know, times.
Do you use the Mastercard Economics Institute as kind of a consulting angle to get new partners in, or do you use it differently?
Yeah.
'Cause it does have an enormous amount of information that comes out of it.
It we use it both as a think tank.
Mm-hmm
As a tool for us to understand our own businesses, you know, to forecast better, for example. We use it with our partners in advising them on, you know, what we're seeing in the market. We have a very unique data set. It's also embedded in our products. so, you know, obviously, there's a close linkage to SpendingPulse. It is, there's a linkage to Test & Learn. We're doing a lot of scenario planning work and economic forecasting work with many of our customers. In fact, there's one recently that I was looking at where we improved the accuracy of their forecasting by 10-fold.
Wow!
By co-coupling some of our economic insights with a steep understanding of their business, coupled with consulting. Yes, there's a lot of commercial applications as well as, you know, thought leadership applications.
Internal. Yeah.
Yeah.
That actually brings up a really interesting point. What are some of the things that have happened within services that you've actually turned inward, you know, and made maybe Mastercard a better organization as a whole because of that?
Mm-hmm.
Are those examples that you would be willing to share?
Yeah, no, there are lots of examples. You know, services, like I said, when you think about data analytics and AI.
Yeah
I t's embedded in all of our services, right? The D&S services, in terms of, you know, getting the consumer what they want faster, better, cheaper, right, more effectively. In terms of C&I, in protecting us against, you know, fraud attacks, cyber attacks, et cetera. It's embedded in our products. Then we've brought that into Mastercard. We have things like, the Unlocked platform, that matches employees to opportunities, that leverages data and AI, right? We're looking at all kinds of applications of AI across Mastercard and analytics across Mastercard.
Yep.
It originates in our products and services, and then comes into Mastercard. Even the forecasting, scenario planning work that we now do as a consulting project, it started with us doing it, you know, to ourselves. It's a little like innovation.
Yeah.
We started Labs as a Service because we became innovative, and then suddenly we realized we can help others innovate.
Yep.
it goes both ways.
Okay. We've gone a little while without saying AI, so let's just delve into it a little. You said it, but we haven't really talked about it. How do you actually look at the opportunities and threats within your business? Is there a broader context to the way that Mastercard is thinking about how to employ this, both, again, internally, but also externally with partners?
Yeah. You know, given a focus on data quality, on AI, on machine learning, on that entire space has been something we've had for two decades, right? The data assets that we have, the insights that we have, They've taken a lot of work to get here in terms of the quality and accuracy of them, and it's very hard to replicate very quickly. Embedded in that is, you know, is the AI and different types of algorithms that we use. It's embedded in our products, you know, whether it is a consumer engagement product, ones that we had traditionally or even Dynamic Yield, which is new.
Mm-hmm.
Whether it is a insights product, most of our platforms, Test & Learn, all have AI embedded in them. In the C&I business, you know, a lot of our fraud scores, the ability to detect, you know, patterns of, cyber attacks, all of that, you know, it leverages AI of one form or another.
Mm.
I mentioned internally to things like, you know, matching employees to opportunities.
Yeah.
There's a lot of AI around Mastercard. We're also looking at new techniques, you know, privacy-enhancing techniques, you know, PETs. We're looking at, obviously, everyone's talking about generative AI.
Right
A nd large language models. not new to any of us, right? Just very popular, given ChatGPT right now.
It is, yeah. Yep.
We do things like, you know, we have synthetic data sets that we use to train our fraud models. We have, you know, applications that we're developing. There are lots of applications such as, you know, can you get information to a salesperson faster, more, in a more synthesized way? Can you write a job description faster? Can you help your customer service folks deliver an answer to a customer faster?
Mm-hmm.
You know, can you iterate creative faster? These are all things that are tools that we and everyone else is looking at.
Yeah.
I will say, I'd be remiss to not include AI governance. One thing we take very seriously.
Mm
I s AI governance. This has been true ever since we, you know, started this path, this journey on data and analytics, on data analytics, et cetera, a couple of decades ago. Ethical AI is really important. Governance is really important. Putting in guardrails, understanding of all different types, you know, whether it's from in the ideation process, you know, bias testing, model testing, releasing the product, and then making sure you understand drift, making sure it doesn't have any unintended consequences. You really understand what it does.
Yeah.
The governance and making sure you feel it is ethically correct, it's critically important. AI is both exciting in terms of what it unleashes, the innovation it unleashes, because our employees are innovating all the time, you know, using various techniques. Equally important is you need to have the guardrails, you need to have the governance, you need to have the oversight to make sure you're doing the right thing.
Yeah. Do you feel like, you know, in that context, that because of the popularity of, you know, generative AI and large language models and stuff, and you are a very regulated, business, you know, some of these other ones are not quite so regulated, so they can kind of maybe push the envelope. Do you feel like that's a gating factor for you in terms of being able to be more innovative? Or you think that's an actual net positive, speaking to your point of having a responsible approach to this process?
I would say net positive. That's an easy answer. We've always been principled in our approach, and I talked about AI, but we've been principled across the board about our approach, right? Take our, you know, data privacy, rules.
Yeah
T hat we abide by. You know, we believe, Dan, that you should own your data. You should control and consent, in terms of, you know, who you give consent to on your data. You should benefit from that consent.
Yeah.
It's our job to protect it if you give us the consent. You should have the right to change your mind. These basic, I call them human rights, right? Fundamental human data rights.
Mm-hmm.
Our data responsibility principles are really embedded in that. We live by it. We're principled in how we approach product development, for example. We have privacy by design built into our product development process from the ideation stage, all the way through the, you know, implementation stage. We have security by design embedded into our products. We believe in data minimization. The product should only use the data that it needs to use and no more, right? These are all, we're very principle-based. You mentioned regulation. We abide by all the regulation that's out there very willingly. Take GDPR in Europe as an example.
Mm.
You know, we obviously are GDPR compliant and, you know, do it in absolutely the right way, and we be careful to do it in the right way. It's a very high standard, and we like the standard, so we adopted it not just in Europe, but in other jurisdictions, too.
Mm.
You know, for us, it's the highest standard, it's the high hurdle. We believe in being principled and being, you know, careful and deliberate in what we do while we want to be innovative. I think it's important to do both.
Yeah.
It's not one or the other.
To your point about data, I mean, you see a lot of it. You obviously gain an enormous amount of insight. We've talked a lot about the responsibility of it, but how do you protect it, right? I mean, that is core ultimately, to the success of services. If it's not appropriately protected in some way, shape, or form and, or governed-
Yeah
You run the risk of the whole segment.
Yeah
Being compromised and the trust, quite frankly, of Mastercard, so.
Yeah. Obviously, we protect it diligently.
Yeah.
It is. Data quality is important. It's not only the data, it's the quality of our data, right?
Mm-hmm.
It is, it's our crown jewel.
Yep.
We're very careful to tease insights out of it, and it's the insights that we use. It's not the raw data. It is the insights that we use. We use all kinds of techniques like aggregation, anonymization, new Privacy-Enhancing Technologies. I mentioned synthetic data a moment ago. We're always using, you know, techniques to make sure that we treat it in the right way. We tease out the insights in the right way, and then it's those insights that fuel our products and services.
Mm-hmm.
We are, very, very careful with it.
Yep. No, I suspect you are. I did wanna touch, you mentioned Dynamic Yield a couple of times.
Mm-hmm.
One, maybe for, you know, our own edification, what was exciting about that asset that you know, you wanted to acquire it? What does it bring to not only your business, but here again, in the larger context of Mastercard?
Yes, very excited about the asset, by the way. It's just a little over a year.
Yep
Since we acquired Dynamic Yield and brought them into the Mastercard family. It is a state-of-the-art personalization platform. It is a remarkable capability. They also brought in something like 400 brands into the Mastercard family.
Mm.
You know, some are institutions we already work with, some are new to Mastercard. The bottom line is the capability, when you look at the synergy with what we do, the capability is applicable to a lot of different things that we do. Obviously, on a standalone basis, they're very successful and continue to be successful. It's also, it is linked into a lot of our other products and capabilities.
Okay.
For example, we, launched something called Element recently, which takes some of our insights and our targeting models and embeds it into Dynamic Yield, to make it more powerful.
Okay.
We have, customers that use, you know, Test & Learn in Dynamic Yield or, you know, some of our insights products in Dynamic Yield or SessionM in Dynamic Yield. The synergy is there. We have a vision of creating a consumer engagement hub using some of these capabilities that we're working on. It really, it brings a lot to the table, and, we continue to be successful with them. You know, we announced, a few wins. They continue to win really well, on a standalone basis and with us.
Yep.
I think we won. We announced Puma, we announced Hyundai Motors. There's some, you know, wins with Cencosud, with, there's several examples.
It is a big brand, right?
It is global. It is truly global.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So-
Very excited about it.
I'm interested because the, you know, the personalization space and loyalty, I mean, it seems like it's evolved massively, not just in the past, like, five years, but like in the past year. This asset seems to bring you into kind of a different level of discussion. When you're winning these clients, these very large global brands, and they're coming to you, what are they asking for that you're able to deliver that maybe someone else can't, either from a competitor, directly or indirectly, quite frankly?
Yeah. The personalization capability is just, you know, one more addition, you know, to the suite that we have. At the end of the day, when the customers come to us, they're really looking for. I come back to smarter decisions for better outcomes.
Yep.
They're really trying to say, if it's in this case, if it's consumer engagement, they're really trying to say, you know, whether it is in-store, digital, you know, whether it is, you know, whether that digital experience is on your phone or, you know, off a menu board or off a, you know, wherever you are.
Mm-hmm.
The ability to be able to understand that consumer, understand where they're coming from, market to them as a consumer of one, you know, be able to put the right offers in front of them, to be able to deliver the right experiences to them is critical. A lot of our capabilities come together in order to do that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. You know, one of the things we talk about oftentimes within the services sector is, you know, maybe it's kind of non-cyclical nature, right? Payments by its nature is cyclical. You might have different verticals here that support you when things are good or bad, but reality is, it's a cyclical business. It always has been. I think everyone just kind of woke up to that during COVID. Services, as you point out, is a third or more of this company today. Do you think in the broad context of Mastercard, that it's helping balance some of that cyclicality associated with just payments?
Yeah. If you look at our services business, I think we disclosed this back in 2021, about half our services are tied to transactions.
Yep.
That's true of a lot of the C&I services, it's true of some D&S services. We have a lot of services that are subscription-based, loyalty, Test & Learn, you know, Dynamic Yield, they're all long-term contracts. We also have bespoke services, which could be for a project, but could also be a program over multiple years, right? There's a variety of different types of services that are embedded in there. Yes, it is, and they're relevant in across economic cycles. I think the example I gave you is 2020. If you go look at our results, services did pretty well in 2020.
Yeah.
Right?
It did.
When payments fundamentally changed because people were frozen where they were, right?
Exactly.
Our services business is, there are elements of our services business that are very applicable in different ways, in different economic cycles, in different parts of an economic cycle.
Yeah.
That's true of our consulting services, our marketing services, our Test & Learn capabilities, and even some of our insights, analytics products. The way you use them. You know, it depends on the context you're using them in.
Yep. I know we just have a few more seconds here. I figured I would cede the floor to you. If you're looking through kind of the lens of the possible within services over the course of the next five, six years, what are the things that are most exciting that you see on the horizon, and things that maybe we should be looking out for that, we think could be material drivers to the business, not just for your business, but Mastercard as a whole?
Yeah. services, you know, are a key contributor to Mastercard today and will be for a very long time.
Yeah.
It is a part of our long-term growth, and like I said, it both differentiates our payments business and enhances our payments business, as well as it diversifies us. New segments, new use cases, new networks, right? Really diversifies us. It's a, it's there's a lot of runway. It's a world rich with opportunities.
Yeah
B oth in enhancing our current capabilities, in bringing in new capabilities, which could be organically or through an acquisition or through a partnership. There's a lot that we're doing to continue enhancing our data quality and the size, the scale of our data assets, our algorithms, our AI, our techniques, analytical techniques, investing a lot in our talent. All of those contribute to the growth of services, and it is there are lots of different opportunities, and there's always the challenge for us is investing in the highest value opportunities at any given time, keeping in mind, you know, payments and services. It's an exciting place to be.
Right.
A lot of runway, a lot of, really interesting things, that we are looking at. It'll be a part of Mastercard for many years to come.
Yep.
A large growing part of Mastercard. Like I said, our mission at the end of the day, is helping our customers make smarter decisions for better outcomes.
Yeah.
That is really what we're focused on.
That is priceless.
That is priceless.
Thank you. I wish we had more time to spend with you today, but, thank you so much for being here. It is really an exciting part of the story, and, we're looking forward to seeing where that ends up taking you. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, Dan.
All right.