Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the first quarter 2022 Mastercard Earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to speaker today, Mr. Warren Kneeshaw, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Jemiria. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2022 earnings call. With me today are Michael Miebach, our Chief Executive Officer, and Sachin Mehra, our Chief Financial Officer. Following comments from Michael and Sachin, the operator will announce your opportunity to get into the queue for the Q&A session. It is only then that the queue will open for questions. You can access our earnings release, supplemental performance data, and the slide deck that accompany this call in the investor relations section of our website, mastercard.com. Additionally, the release was furnished with the SEC earlier this morning. Our comments today regarding our financial results will be on a non-GAAP currency neutral basis, unless otherwise noted. Both the release and the slide deck include reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP reported amounts.
Finally, as set forth in more detail in our earnings release, I'd like to remind everyone that today's call will include forward-looking statements regarding Mastercard's future performance. Actual performance could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Information about the factors that could affect future performance are summarized at the end of the earnings release and in our recent SEC filings. A replay of this call will be posted on our website for 30 days. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Michael Miebach.
Thank you, Warren. Good morning, everyone. Russia's invasion of Ukraine marked a somber start to 2022 as war returned to Europe for the first time in decades. Given these extraordinary circumstances, we decided to suspend our business operations in Russia. We did not take this decision lightly, given that Mastercard has operated in Russia for more than 25 years. We are now focused on the orderly suspension of business operations in Russia and supporting the well-being of our employees and their families across the whole region. Even in the context of this challenging geopolitical environment, we're off to a strong start in 2022. We delivered robust revenue and earnings growth with further improvement in our underlying operating metrics, notably in cross-border travel. Quarter one adjusted net revenues were up 27% and adjusted operating income up 40% versus a year ago on a non-GAAP currency neutral basis.
On the macroeconomic front, consumer spending remains strong, particularly as economies across the globe continue to reopen and pandemic-related restrictions are lifted. Labor markets are firm with low unemployment rates and rising wages. Weighing against this healthy backdrop are a number of factors that they are monitoring, including inflationary pressures, supply chain constraints, geopolitical uncertainties, and COVID infection rates. We're monitoring these developments, including the fiscal, monetary, public healthcare, and other policy responses. Let's look at this from a geographic standpoint. U.S. retail spending remains healthy, aided in part by the buildup of excess savings during the pandemic. According to our quarter one SpendingPulse report, which is based on all payment types, including cash and check, U.S. retail sales, ex- auto, ex- gas, were up 4.7% versus a year ago.
In Europe, spending trends are positive, although the invasion of Ukraine has introduced risks to economic growth looking ahead. Growth in Latin America continues to moderate following a strong rebound in 2021. Asia has generally lacked the recovery of other regions. We're seeing several countries relaxing COVID-related restrictions, while others are facing stronger measures. Asia continues to have significant upside potential. Looking at Mastercard spending trends, we continue to see strong growth. Domestic switched volumes saw strength across a broad range of sectors, including retail, utilities, and professional spend. We also saw strong growth in travel and entertainment, including spending with airlines, travel agencies, lodging, and restaurants. In terms of cross-border, where the growth was particularly strong, the recovery continued this quarter led by travel. Cross-border travel reached 2019 levels as of March for the first time since the pandemic began.
Geographically, the cross-border recovery has been broad-based with improvement across all regions. Cross-border card not present ex- travel continues to be strong. Our strategy is designed to enable and capitalize on these trends, and we're executing against our three key strategic priorities. One, expanding in payments. Two, extending our services. Three, embracing new networks. Here's an update on how we're progressing against each of those. First, we're expanding in payments by continuing to grow card payments and leaning into innovation and new payment technologies to capture other prioritized payment flows. We're driving growth in card payments through new consumer, small business, co-brand, and fintech wins. On the consumer and small business fronts, I'm excited to announce an enhanced partnership with Wells Fargo, which includes several new elements.
Wells Fargo will now issue Mastercard small business credit cards, and for the first time in almost a decade, consumer proprietary and co-brand credit products. We're also excited to announce that we have deepened our relationship with our long-standing partner, Capital One. In addition to renewing our existing business, we will also be their issuing network for a larger number of new originations across both their consumer and small business products. Further on the small business front, we are expanding our small business portfolio with First National Bank of Omaha. We're also partnering with the bank and Verizon to launch a new Verizon business Mastercard targeting Verizon small business customers. In total, these partnerships will help us continue growing our U.S. small business market share. Outside the U.S., we're driving commercial card growth through new partnerships with leading B2B tech companies like Klarna.
We will be flipping Klarna's business portfolio in Mexico to Mastercard and are working with them to launch new programs in five additional markets across Latin America. Turning to co-brands. We've made substantial progress to ensure we are well-positioned to capitalize on the return of travel. We have renewed and expanded our exclusive partnership with American Airlines, one of the largest co-brand programs in the United States. American will continue to leverage our capabilities, including SessionM, and will participate in our Start Path program to identify new tech partners who can help drive innovation across the airline. In the U.K., we have launched two new Barclaycard Avios cards with Barclays and International Airlines Group Loyalty. Outside of travel, we've expanded our relationships with leading retailers, including a new co-brand program with Victoria's Secret and a renewal of our Ulta Beauty co-brand offering, both in partnership with Bread Financial.
We're also continuing to advance our leadership in the digital and fintech space through new product launches and new partnerships. We're partnering with BCA Digital, the digital banking arm of the largest private bank in Indonesia, to launch a digital-first Mastercard debit product catering to millennials. In Latin America, we signed a regional partnership with global payments processing platform Galileo Financial Technologies. The partnership establishes Mastercard as Galileo's preferred partner across several markets in Latin America, and they will work to integrate and distribute several of our products and services to help their fintech customers. In addition to driving new wins, we are leveraging our services capabilities to execute against many of the large portfolio migrations that are in flight. In Europe, our consulting teams are engaging with our partners at Santander, NatWest, and Deutsche Bank to ensure a smooth and timely transition and to identify opportunities to optimize those portfolios.
Santander is the bulk of the way through a 9 million card migration and we expect it to be complete by early next year. While NatWest commenced the issuance of Mastercard at the end of last year and plans to migrate their entire 16 million card portfolio by the middle of 2023. Deutsche Bank's 10 million consumer and commercial credit and debit cards will be reissued as Mastercard branded cards with a credit migration starting quarter four of this year and a debit migration commencing early next year. Similarly, our team in the U.S. is supporting key migrations including Gap Inc, Merrick Bank, and First Interstate Bank. All the migrations are on track, with Gap Inc scheduled to be completed this summer. We're also expanding in payments by leaning into payments innovation in areas like installments and cryptocurrencies. Here are a few examples.
Our open-loop Mastercard Installments program has been very well received and is progressing according to plan. Remember, Mastercard Installments is built into our network, making buy now, pay later available to millions of consumers and merchants worldwide. We continue to add a wide array of new lender and fintech partners, including Amount, Deserve, i2c, Lithic, and Sutton Bank. In this quarter, we announced several merchant partners who are excited to support Mastercard Installments, including Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's, H&R Block, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Walgreens. U.S. customers will begin offering Mastercard Installments to consumers this quarter and international expansion is planned for later this year. We continue to build solutions to support the crypto economy with a principled approach focused on three key areas. First, helping consumers easily and safely purchase cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
In addition, we are enabling consumers to spend their crypto holdings on card and cashing out their crypto wallets via Mastercard Send. Second, providing identity, cyber, and consulting services for market participants, including engaging with central banks as they design and develop central bank digital currencies. Third, preparing our core network to directly support digital currencies. We're making substantial progress in each of these areas. This quarter, the Gemini Mastercard, which offers crypto rewards, went live across the U.S. We also partnered with Nexo to launch a new crypto card in Europe, one that uses consumers' digital assets as collateral to back their credit line. We established several other international crypto card partnerships, including banks in Europe and Abra, Invesco, and Belo in Latin America.
On the crypto services front, Mercado Libre will be leveraging CipherTrace's AI and cyber capabilities to bring security and trust to their digital wallets in Brazil. Now, turning to our second strategic priority, services. As I've noted before, our services support and differentiate our core products and have played a critical role in enabling many of the wins I mentioned. We also continue to extend our services across multiple growth vectors through new payment platform capabilities, new verticals, and new use cases. Here are a few examples. First, earlier this month, we completed our acquisition of Dynamic Yield. Now that the transaction is closed, we will combine Dynamic Yield's personalization platform and decision engine with our SessionM loyalty platform and our Test & Learn experimentation software. The result will be a truly differentiated consumer engagement and loyalty hub for our customers.
Second, we announced that we're expanding our consulting services into three new practices dedicated to open banking and open data, crypto and digital currencies, and ESG. We've seen increased customer demand and a growing portfolio of successful engagements in these areas. For example, we are supporting Handelsbanken and Intesa Sanpaolo design programs that advance their ESG priorities. We're helping Wirex explore innovations in crypto. Finally, we're expanding the breadth of our customer base and deploying our capabilities to solve for a wider range of use cases. For example, we deployed our Test & Learn capabilities to help Tailored Brands optimize retail operations and improve marketing efficiency for their leading menswear brands. We deployed our Ethoca capabilities with Santander in Spain to help streamline dispute resolutions and improve the customer experience. Beyond expanding in payments and expanding in services, our third key priority area is embracing new networks.
Our current focus is on two areas, open banking and digital identity. Our open banking and multi-rail strategies are converging, enabling us to leverage our unique set of assets to address new flows in verticals like rent payments. For rent payments, the risk of ACH returns due to insufficient funds is a significant pain point for both renters and landlords. To address this challenge, we're launching a new suite of smart payment decisioning tools. These solutions use Finicity's open banking capabilities to recommend the optimal payment day and payment rail for each transaction based on cost, speed, and risk. The Bilt Rewards Alliance, a collection of more than 2 million rental homes, will be one of the first fintech partners to launch these capabilities. We plan to expand these solutions across a broad range of bill payment verticals.
In addition, we continue to extend our open banking reach with Finicity and Aiia by penetrating new verticals and establishing new partnerships. We continue to enhance our capabilities of the mortgage vertical and are now expanding into the auto lending vertical. We're leading the way in terms of provisioning permission-based income, employment, and asset verification information, and we partner with Stripe, who will be using our open banking capabilities for a variety of use cases. We're also extending our open banking reach through data access agreements with partners like Fiserv, which will enable direct API connectivity to thousands of FIs in the United States. In the digital identity space, Ekata continued its strong performance in quarter one, securing deals with financial services companies, including MoneyLion and several leading buy now, pay later providers.
In addition, we recently joined forces with Microsoft on a collaboration to improve digital transaction approval rates and reduce fraud. The solution enables issuers to optimize authorization decisions using network and merchant-specific authentication data. Combined, open banking and digital identity extend our value before and after the payment transaction and into new digital transactions. These are attractive and growing opportunities, and we are uniquely positioned to be successful in both. In summary, our business fundamentals remain strong, and we delivered robust revenue and earnings growth again this quarter, which also reflects our disciplined approach to expense management. We're executing against our strategic priorities, notably expanding our share with key issuers. In addition, we've worked hard to expand our travel-oriented portfolios, which positions us well to capitalize on the strong recovery in cross-border travel.
Last but not least, we want to reflect on what is most important, the safety and well-being of our employees and the families who have been impacted by the war. Our thoughts are with them and the people of Ukraine. Sachin, over to you.
Thanks, Michael. Turning to page three, which shows our financial performance for the quarter on a currency neutral basis, excluding special items and the impact of gains and losses on our equity investments. Net revenue was up 27%, reflecting the continued execution of our strategy and the ongoing recovery in spending. Acquisitions contributed 2 PPT to this growth. These revenues were above expectation, primarily due to stronger-than-expected cross-border and domestic volumes, favorable cross-border mix, and FX-related revenues. Operating expenses increased 13%, including a 6 PPT increase from acquisitions. Operating income was up 40%, which includes a 1 PPT decrease related to acquisitions. Net income was up 61%, which includes a 20 PPT benefit due to the recognition of a one-time discrete tax benefit related to a U.S. tax regulation published in the current period and a 1 PPT decrease from acquisitions.
EPS was up 65% year-over-year to $2.76, which includes a $0.36 contribution from the one-time discrete tax benefit and a $0.05 contribution from share repurchases. During the quarter, we repurchased $2.4 billion worth of stock and an additional $599 million through April 25th, 2022. Let's turn to page four, where you can see the operational metrics for the first quarter. Worldwide gross dollar volume, or GDV, increased by 17% year-over-year on a local currency basis. Of note, data related to sanctioned Russian banks was not reported to us, and hence such amounts are not included in Q1 2022. In the U.S., GDV increased by 14%, with credit growth of 31% and debit growth of 1%, reflecting the recovery of credit spending on travel and the lapping of stimulus.
Outside of the U.S., volume increased 19%, with credit growth of 20% and debit growth of 18%. Cross-border volume was up 53% globally for the quarter, with intra-Euro cross-border volumes up 50% and other cross-border volumes up 56%, reflecting continued improvement in travel-related cross-border. For the first time since the onset of the pandemic, cross-border volume was above 2019 levels for all regions, and cross-border travel was above 2019 levels for the first time in March. Turning now to page five, switch transactions grew 22% year-over-year in Q1 and were at 150% of 2019 levels. Card present and card not present growth rates remain strong. Card present growth was aided in part by increases in contactless penetration in several regions.
With respect to card counts, as a result of the suspension of our business operations in Russia, cards issued by Russian banks are no longer active on our network and are therefore excluded from our card counts this quarter. Accordingly, card growth was lower at 4% this quarter. If you exclude Russian-issued cards from current and prior years, card growth would have been 9%. Globally, there are 2.9 billion Mastercard and Maestro-branded cards issued. Now let's turn to page six for the highlights on the revenue line items, again described on a currency-neutral basis, excluding special items, unless otherwise noted. The increase in net revenue of 27% was primarily driven by domestic and cross-border transaction and volume growth, as well as growth in services, partially offset by growth in rebates and incentives. Acquisitions contributed approximately 2 PPT to this growth.
I'd also like to point out that in the first quarter, the suspension of business operations in Russia had a minimal impact to the overall growth rate of the company, as the loss of volume was offset by a one-time benefit of lower rebates and incentives due to the absence of a customer incentive agreement renewal in Russia. Looking quickly at the individual revenue line items. Domestic assessments were up 21%, while worldwide GDV grew 17%. The 4 PPT difference is primarily due to unreported volumes from Russian-related sanctioned customers and a favorable mix. Cross-border volume fees increased 57%, while cross-border volumes increased 53%, both ahead of expectations. The 4 PPT difference is primarily due to favorable mix as higher-yielding ex-intra Europe cross-border volumes grew faster than intra Europe cross-border volumes this quarter. Transaction processing fees were up 27%, while switch transactions grew 22%.
The 5 PPT difference is primarily due to favorable cross-border mix and FX-related revenues. Other revenues were up 20%, including a 7 PPT contribution from acquisitions. The remaining growth was driven by our cyber intelligence and data and services solutions. Finally, rebates and incentives were up 30%, reflecting the strong growth in volume from transactions and new and renewed deal activity. As a percentage of gross revenues, rebates and incentives were lower than expected, primarily due to the absence of a planned customer incentive agreement renewal in Russia, a higher mix of cross-border revenues, and the timing of new and renewed deals. Moving to page seven, you can see that on a currency-neutral basis, total operating expenses increased 13%, including a 6 PPT impact from acquisitions.
Excluding acquisitions, operating expenses grew 7%, primarily due to increased spending on advertising and marketing, higher personnel costs to support the continued investment in our strategic initiatives, and increased data processing costs. Turning to page eight, let's discuss the operating metrics for the first 3 weeks of April. For your reference, to help you understand the trends in the business ex-Russia, we have included an appendix later in this deck to show all the data points from the schedule if you excluded activity from Russian-issued cards from current and prior periods. Going through the metrics in turn, starting with switch volumes, for the first 3 weeks of April, we grew 23% year-over-year, down 4 PPT versus Q1, primarily due to the cessation of activities in Russia. If you exclude Russia-related volumes from the current and prior periods, switch volumes grew 27%, down 1 PPT versus Q1.
Switch transactions grew 14% year-over-year through the first 3 weeks of April, down 8 PPT from Q1, again, driven primarily by the absence of Russia-related transactions. Of note, Russia has a relatively low average ticket size, which results in a larger relative impact to this metric. If you exclude Russia-related transactions from the current and prior periods, switch transactions grew by 25% year-over-year, up 1 PPT versus Q1. Overall, cross-border volumes through the first 3 weeks of April grew 60% year-over-year, up 7 PPT versus Q1. Excluding Russia from the current and prior periods, cross-border volumes through the same period grew 65% year-over-year, up 13 PPT versus Q1. Since the end of January, cross-border travel has rebounded quickly as border restrictions continue to be lifted and we distance ourselves from Omicron.
In the first 3 weeks of April, cross-border travel was up 179% year-over-year, up 38 PPT versus Q1. Cross-border card not present, excluding travel, was up 5% year-over-year in April, a decrease of 8 PPT compared to Q1, reflecting in part the lapping of a strong comparable period year ago. One point to emphasize is cross-border travel is now above pre-pandemic levels at 110% of 2019 levels. Turning to page nine, I want to share our thoughts on the remainder of 2022. Let me start by saying that our business fundamentals remain strong as we continue to grow our customer relationships and expand our product and service offerings. As Michael mentioned, consumer spending remains robust, particularly as economies open further and pandemic-related restrictions are lifted.
Having said this, we are monitoring a number of factors, including inflationary pressures, supply chain constraints, geopolitical uncertainties, and COVID infection rates. At this stage, we have not seen any significant impact of these on consumer spending. Cross-border travel is recovering rapidly as border restrictions ease. This is occurring faster than our earlier expectations. We are well positioned to capitalize on this growth with our travel-oriented portfolios. Weighing against these positive trends are the impacts of the war in Ukraine and the suspension of our business operations in Russia. Now taking all of this into account, we continue to expect net revenues for full year 2022 to grow at the high end of a high-teens rate on a currency-neutral basis, excluding acquisitions and special items.
Essentially, we are maintaining our growth expectations in the same range as the strong cross-border travel recovery and strengthened consumer spending help mitigate the loss of sizable revenues in Russia and Ukraine. Acquisitions are forecasted to add about 1 PPT to this growth, while foreign exchange is expected to be a headwind of 3-4 PPT for the year, primarily due to the strengthening of the U.S. dollar relative to the euro. In terms of operating expenses, we are reducing our forecast for the year to reflect cost savings related to Russia. For the year, we expect operating expenses to grow at a high single-digit rate on a currency-neutral basis, excluding acquisitions and special items. Acquisitions are forecast to add about 4-5 PPT to this growth, while foreign exchange is expected to be a tailwind of approximately 2-3 PPT for the year.
With respect to the second quarter, year-over-year net revenue is expected to grow at the high end of a high-teens rate, again on a currency-neutral basis, excluding acquisitions. This reflects, firstly, strong consumer spending, including continued improvement in cross-border travel spending relative to 2019. Secondly, the discontinuation of revenues from Russia and a sequential reduction in revenues related to Ukraine. Finally, the lapping of a strong year-ago quarter that was aided by fiscal stimulus and the easing of pandemic-related restrictions as vaccination programs rolled out. Acquisitions are forecast to add about 1 PPT to this growth, while foreign exchange is expected to be a headwind of approximately 5-6 PPT for the quarter. From an operating expense standpoint, we expect Q2 operating expenses to grow at a high single-digit rate versus a year ago on a currency-neutral basis, excluding acquisitions and special items.
Acquisitions are forecast to add about 4-5 PPT to this growth, including the acquisition of Dynamic Yield, which we are pleased to have just closed. Foreign exchange is expected to be a tailwind of approximately 3-4 PPT for the quarter. Other items to keep in mind, on the other income and expense line, we are at an expense run rate of approximately $115 million per quarter, given the prevailing interest rates and our recent debt issuance. This excludes gains and losses on our equity investments, which are excluded from our non-GAAP metrics. Finally, we expect a tax rate of approximately 18%-19% for each of the remaining quarters of the fiscal year based on the current geographic mix of our business.
Before closing out, I want to briefly comment on our 3-year performance objectives for 2022 - 2024. Clearly, the elimination of Russia-related revenues and the reduction of those from Ukraine create a headwind to achieving these objectives. If this were to continue, it would result in a headwind of approximately 2 PPT to our net revenue CAGR. Having said this, we are off to a strong start in 2022 with the recovery of cross-border travel ahead of expectations, as I previously mentioned. We remain focused on building long-term sustainable growth for the company. Net-net, it is really too early to adjust our 3-year performance objectives as we work to offset some or all of these headwinds. With that, I will turn the call back over to Warren.
Thank you, Sachin. Jemiria, we are now ready for the question and answer session.
As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question will come from the line of Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks. Good morning. I've got a question on inflation. I know, the data suggests the consumer remains in good shape, as we look across trends in the vertical as such. Are you seeing anything that sort of, is seeing some kind of negative impact on consumer spending patterns as a result of inflation? I know we heard some comments on e-commerce. Maybe you could talk about that. Thank you.
Sanjay, thanks for your question. On the inflation side, as Sachin mentioned earlier, we have not seen anything yet in terms of changing consumer spending behaviors. What we're seeing is in terms of the impact on, you know, vertical mix and so forth, there has been a 1% increase in our switch volume that's related to gas price increases. We're seeing some shifts in the airline that is again under an inflationary pressure there from ticket prices perspective. We'll have to see where it goes going forward. I mean, fundamentally, where I stand on this is the push by consumers into the digital space. They learn these habits. They're online. All that will continue, and we'll see where the underlying prices go.
In the end, it comes back to what we've been saying all along. There's macro considerations in each country that has to be considered here. What is monetary fiscal policy? Then there is the micro aspects of the different verticals, which ones of those are carded, which ones we would see, which ones we wouldn't see. Could there be a crowding out effect of rents or gas prices, particularly in Europe? Yeah, there might be, but that's not something we can tell yet.
Your next question will come from the line of Harshita Rawat with Bernstein. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, good morning. Michael and Sachin, I want to ask about cross-border travel. Very strong recovery here. Is there a scenario where even if, let's say, China or other parts of Asia don't come back meaningfully, you can still kind of get back to this, like, normalized 30%-40% kind of level above 2019, which was kind of the run rate pre-pandemic, because there's so much pent-up demand, or does Asia and China need to come back for the next leg of meaningful cross-border recovery? Sachin, just to follow up for you, can you just talk about the sensitivity of your revenue guidance, should macro consumer spending deteriorate from here? Thanks.
Thanks, Harshita. First, on your question on cross-border, you're absolutely right. You know, cross-border travel has actually come back stronger than our expectations, and there continues to be, you know, pent-up demand. We, in terms of, you know, how we're thinking about our guidance, we've kind of built in that improving recovery in cross-border travel on a going forward basis as well. You know, I just want to kind of get that out there. To give you a little bit more color, right, on cross-border. Cross-border volumes are above 2019 levels across all regions for the first time.
I would tell you that the top 20 destinations, which represented approximately 70% of our total cross-border travel pre-pandemic and were at 70% of 2019 levels when we discussed this at our Investor Community Meeting, are now at, you know, 85% in Q1 of 2022. Specifically, on your question around Asia Pacific, I think it's important to note that Asia Pacific has been slower to recover. The Asia Pacific opportunity as I see it is as follows: Asia Pacific represented approximately 15% of total inbound cross-border travel volumes pre-pandemic and were at 40% of our 2019 levels in Q1. As you can see from this number, right, that there is a fair amount of recovery still remaining to come from Asia Pacific.
Obviously, it does matter in terms of how restrictions are lifted in that market. Again, the point is, at the end of the day, cross-border fundamentally is still very sound. This is something we've been talking about right through the pandemic, where we felt like when restrictions are eased, volumes in cross-border will come back. We've seen that happen, and we continue to believe fundamentally that remains very much in place. On AP in particular, a couple of thoughts on China. One, both China, both from an inbound and an outbound standpoint, were not a very significant portion of our cross-border volumes pre-pandemic. In fact, I would argue that the outbound China was slightly higher than the inbound China.
When you think about recovery, you've also got to think about what restrictions are there in terms of people going into countries versus people coming out of countries. I would tell you, outbound China has shown better improvement than inbound China for obvious reasons, as we all know that there have been lockdowns in China and things of that sort. You know, net- net, as I sit back and I think about this, I think about the fundamentals of cross-border being strong. I think about the potential for pent-up demand continuing to contribute to, you know, improvements in cross-border travel spend. The whole Asia Pacific region still remains a fairly large opportunity on a going forward basis.
Yeah, if I can just build on that. We love cross-border. While we love the trends, it's a lot of hard work. Over the last 2 years, the travel industry was hard hit from the outset of the pandemic. We have leaned in. If I recall, over the last 2 years, JetBlue, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, LATAM, Aeroplan, Air Canada, you name it. It's a long list of where we have either expanded, renewed, won additional volume. We're participating in the trend in a very significant way. You know, we've always said it's gonna happen this year, and we're ready for that.
Your next question will come from the line of Rayna Kumar with UBS. Please proceed with your questions.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. It was really good to see the strong operating margin expansion in the quarter, 460 basis points. Can you discuss some of the underlying drivers outside of the return of cross-border and how sustainable you believe an upper 50% operating margin is going forward?
Yeah, Rayna, happy to take that question. Look, I mean, at the end of the day, you know that, the business as we have it is a high operating leverage business, right? At the end of the day, incremental dollars of revenue typically flow to the bottom line, just given the nature of how we operate. Certainly cross-border recovery is playing into the recovery in operating margins, but it's not just about cross-border. It's about overall strong consumer spending and cross-border travel recovery, all of which is contributing to the delivery of improved operating margins. Helping that even further is the continued strength in our services and everything we're doing along those paths.
It's everything which we are doing in terms of driving the fundamentals of our business back to the strategic priorities Michael was talking about, which is growing our payments, you know, keeping on leaning in on services and then continuing to invest in the new network space, which is really, really important. All of those factors are contributing factors to the expanding operating margins that you're seeing come through. The message I'd like to leave you with on this is the following. We continue to run the business for long-term sustainable growth, which means effectively that we're gonna continue to invest in a disciplined manner to ensure that we are creating the right opportunities for ourselves to deliver this long-term top-line growth. While we do that, you know, you should see the impact of that come through in terms of operating margins.
Next question please.
Your next question will come from the line of Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, thanks guys. You know, when we look at the types of opportunities on cross-border that you're seeing right now, you clearly are positioned, as you said before, to take advantage of this upswing in travel. Historically it's been very high pass through without rebates, incentives having as high of a correlation. First of all, just to be clear, I mean, should we still expect that to be the case or is there anything around the new business you know, the relationships that Michael, you mentioned earlier, that would cause that growth yield, I guess we can say, or net yield to be a little bit different going forward on this type of big pickup in resumption in spending on travel?
Michael, just more strategically, when we think about that industry in terms of cross-border payments, there's been so much change and even you guys are trying to work through opportunities for more A2A and, you know, open banking opportunities across globally. Has that changed the ecosystem at all or is card-based really how you expect to see cross-border plays stay really dominant for payments cross-border over time?
Thanks, Darrin. I'll take the first part and then you know, Michael will then address your second question. Yeah, I guess the headline is the following, which is we're not seeing anything fundamentally change in terms of the profile of our cross-border revenues. I mean, you know, net-net, you know, things are gonna move around depending on how much cross-border comes from intra Europe versus you know, volumes from outside of that intra Europe corridor. Because as you know, intra Europe is lower yielding and then other cross-border volumes are higher yielding. But fundamentally, I would tell you not much has changed. I will make one point. You talked about rebates and incentives not being there with cross-border. I would say that there's a lower indexation of rebates and incentives to cross-border.
There's always been some level of rebates incentives which have been associated with cross-border, not nearly as high as what's there in the domestic volume environment. We're not seeing fundamentally much change in that regard.
Right. Strategically, Darrin, here's what I'd say is a similar lens that we took at Investor Day where we looked at different universes and different use cases. You got the P2M world where a card is well established domestically but also certainly cross-border. You know, the industry and you know, we very specifically with our services propositions have you know, found a way to ensure that the risks associated with these cross-border transactions for merchants and for consumers are addressed. The conversion rates and the approval rates have continuously increased and there's a lot of value brought. There isn't much of a problem to be resolved to payments for goods on a cross-border basis.
Now, where we're actively looking, you know, intent to participate in all relevant payment flows, we're saying what other payment volumes happening cross-border that we can contribute to with our technology through our franchise and so forth. Here, you know, the whole space of import exports, cross-border accounts payable, you know, that's a space where account-to-account solutions make sense for us. We have specifically called out for you at the Investor Day, the focus on remittances. Again, that's a significant opportunity for us. That's all additive and expansive from a target market perspective, from an opportunity perspective. Attractive growing opportunities. We have the technology on the cross-border remittances side, our Transfast acquisition, our buyout on the HomeSend side, all of that is coming together. It's a 100-country reach.
I think what we're bringing here is the multilateral network idea into this space that has been historically inefficient. I look at it as a growth opportunity while we're gonna continue to power the card side of the house.
Next question, please.
Your next question will come from the line of Lisa Ellis with MoffettNathanson. Please proceed with your question.
Terrific. Thank you. I was hoping to shine a spotlight on LATAM, specifically Brazil. Just taking a peek at the supplementals, Mastercard's volumes are up 40%-50% in that region. Brazil is also a market where you've got a local network like Pix gaining a lot of traction. Can you just use that as an example to talk a bit about how Mastercard coexists in a market like that with one of these domestic networks? Is a player like Pix actually a customer of some or a potential customer of some of your open banking or fraud or identity services? Thank you.
All right, Lisa. Let me take that. First of all, Brazil's been a market in focus, strategically important market for us for years. We're very well established with the large banks out there, Itaú and others to mention. I'm actually seeing the Brazilian country manager right after this call. It's very much in focus. We're very happy with what's going on there. Overall it's a market that drives a lot of innovation. Buy now, pay later has been a thing in Brazil forever. Open banking is on the rise. Real-time payments is on the rise. A lot of movement there. The P2P network that's been introduced by the central bank in the Brazil market is another push to further digitization market.
The whole digitization in Brazil is really seeing great momentum, and we're leaning right into that. Now, the kind of flows that Pix is going after, you see a lot of P2P flows and some B2B flows. That's not necessarily anything that we're particularly worried about, but it's also the kind of flows as part of our multi-rail strategy that we like to support ourselves. We have a whole set of technologies for that. WhatsApp Pay, just to point one out, which went first live in Brazil itself as the first market with innovation and a lot of momentum there.
Here's our technology powering a social network as an alternative, which is an easy user experience, great adoption, 4.7 million users already on that platform. I look at it as a market that's a lot to learn from, a market that we invest in, and you know, where we chart paths for the new additional flows beyond card flows with specific local solutions considering the size of the market.
Yeah. I'll just add, Michael, a couple of thoughts on Brazil. One, you know, you asked the question about the strong growth. You know, clearly it's a combination of, you know, the macro environment, but it's also the fact that we've been leaning in pretty heavily with our traditional issuers as well as our fintech partners in that space, which has been part of the reason why we've been seeing some of that growth come through in a decent manner, at least. The second point I'd make, tying back to Michael's comments around Pix. The market has to be bifurcated in the context of both debit and credit. On the credit side, we continue to see tremendous growth.
Pix, which Michael said is primarily catering to P2P and B2B flows, even if it were to actually proliferate a little bit into, call it the smaller merchants from a P2M standpoint, would primarily be focused around the debit side of the equation. Credit still remains the mainstay for us in Brazil as it stands.
Your next question will come from the line of Tien-Tsin Huang with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you very much, and good morning. I wanted to check in on the balance of trade and this whole card volume coming in and out from wins and losses migrating. Given the update, I know you mentioned Wells Fargo, and of course, and then NatWest and Deutsche Bank. Are you gaining share when all is said and done? I'm just trying to get a better sense, especially in the short term with all the migrations in and out, you know, where you stand in the share game. Thanks.
Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Tien-Tsin. Everything we kind of talked about and Michael talked about earlier on in this conversation was about our expanding relationships with these issuers. With these issuers, we are gaining share. That's the reality of the situation. Again, there are puts and takes in the market, right? As I think about, you know, the new relationship, well, I shouldn't say new relationship, the expanded relationship we have with Wells, right? That's an increasing share position with Wells, which is taking place, for example, there. The bottom line is the following, which is whether it's Wells, Capital One, what we're doing with Santander, NatWest, Deutsche, you name it, you know, the Gap portfolio, all of these incrementally are helping us drive our volumes.
From a holistic market standpoint, again, like I said, there are puts and takes, right? We're very, very optimistic about how we're seeing business translate for us. You know, as we mentioned at the Investor Community Day, we are growing market share across all regions. The market share growth, which we've seen in 16 of our top 20 markets, which is something we shared with you at the Investor Community Day, is really the data points we put out so far.
Tien-Tsin, I should add, I'm very happy you asked the question. I thought these news were just gonna pass by with none of you asking about it, so it's much appreciated.
Your next question will come from the line of David Togut with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you very much. Cross-border card-not-present ex- travel growth was solid in Q1, but did slow throughout the quarter and into April against known very difficult comparisons. Can you unpack cross-border card-not-present ex- travel growth by geography, especially in Europe and U.S., and how you see this playing out throughout this year, especially with, you know, the return of the consumer to the, you know, physical point of sale as, you know, vaccination rates go up. In other words, you see a re-acceleration of e-com later this year, or do you think the consumer's gonna be more active at kind of physical bricks and mortar locations?
Sure, David. I think you're touching upon a couple of things which are there on that card-not-present ex- travel. The reality is as cross-border travel comes back, you do see some give back in terms of cross-border card-not travel, card-not-present ex- travel. That's a mouthful. The point is, at the end of the day, right, there are a few factors you gotta take into consideration when you're thinking about future growth rates for cross-border card-not-present ex- travel. Number one, what the pace of recovery on cross-border travel is gonna be. Number two, what the prior comps were on cross-border card-not-present ex- travel.
Because remember, these growth rates are all influenced by prior comps as well and what was happening in the COVID environment last year, which might have caused for elevated levels of cross-border card-not-present or card-present excluding travel. Number three, you do see fluctuations come in that number through as a result of crypto and crypto volumes, right? These three factors are kinda things you've got to take into consideration. The point at an upper level is the following, which is the consumer continues to spend in an omni-channel manner. When they can get out and spend in a physical environment, they do that. When they can't spend in a card-not-present environment, they do that. We are ready to support them in both manners, whether it's, you know, through our omni-channel capabilities that we're offering our merchants.
The strength which we're seeing in card-not-present ex- travel from a cross-border standpoint, it's something we expect that strength to actually stay going forward as well. There might be puts and takes for all the reasons I just mentioned, but largely, I think consumer behavior has changed in a manner where they've gone more digital, and you're gonna see some strength come through out there.
Okay.
Your next question will come from the line of Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, good morning. Just a couple quick clarifications. On the Russia-Ukraine, I heard that 2 points to net revenue targets to the performance objectives 2022 - 2024. Could you help us clarify the revenue and expense impact for the going forward quarters like the second quarter, third, and fourth this year? Just trying to quantify that. Then the second question is just what level of cross-border recovery are you assuming in the guidance for 2022? Thanks so much.
Sure, Brian. First I'll take your question on Russia and what we're assuming. We have suspended operations in Russia as a result of which we're not earning any revenues related to Russian-issued cards. As it relates to revenue for the rest of the year, you know, we had mentioned that we put out an AP about how Russia represented roughly 4% of our revenues in 2021, and so we assume that that 4% doesn't exist in any of the quarters going forward from a net revenue standpoint, right? Point number two, and again, like I said in my prepared remarks, there's some level of, you know, headwind which we're assuming in Ukraine as well.
The reality is that's a little bit of an uncertainty just because we're not entirely sure as to how the war in Ukraine evolves and what the implications of that are. We built in some assumptions, and that's what we've kind of given you in our overall thoughts. From an expense standpoint, you know, the Russia-related expenses represented roughly 2% of our operating expenses, and again, from a OpEx growth standpoint, and that's the way we think about it. As I mentioned, we have taken down when we shared with you our thoughts for full year 2022, we have taken down our OpEx growth rate on an ex-acquisition, currency-neutral basis to reflect that very impact from a Russia standpoint.
Your next question will come from the line of Ramsey El-Assal with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, thank you for taking my question this morning. I was wondering if you could give us your latest view on what the kind of longer term post-pandemic payment mix looks like for Mastercard. This is related to a kind of a prior question about how, you know, consumers might have changed their behaviors during the pandemic. Do you see a different longer term mix of debit versus credit or any, you know, associated impacts to P&Ls or yields or anything we should consider as we model out for the long term?
Right. Ramsey, let me start off on that. The structural changes that we are seeing, that we've been observing, with our regular consumer engagement surveys over the last 2 years and that have transpired with our customers as well is less cash and checks, number one. Anything digital, more of, number two. This whole notion though has changed in the consumer's mind. A couple things going on. First is consumers are really ready to move on with the pandemic. They wanna go out there. They knock off their bucket list. They wanna, you know, pent-up demand. There's a lot increased spending back into services. It's not a structural feature of the years to come that it's all in goods.
It's gonna go back to services, it's gonna balance out. It's also not gonna be only online, as Sachin just said. It's gonna balance out across multichannel, buy in store, pick up, have delivered, do it the other way around, whatever works. I think consumers will go for more choices, and that comes right down through our multi-rail strategy to enable basically all relevant choices that are out there. I think that's the right positioning. That's what we're gonna see going forward. In terms of debit and credit, you know, if you kinda get a little more granular over here, there was a period in the early parts of the crisis, people will not want to spend on credit if they can avoid it, more control around their finances. That was a big, big tailwind for debit.
We see travel coming back, that's more credit oriented, particularly because of the rewards around it. You start to see in the crypto space, there's a whole new set of credit propositions. You know, we just talked about the Gemini rewards and crypto rewards on that, the Nexo card. There's a whole thing going on. I think in the end it's gonna be multiplicity around these different tools.
Your next question will come from the line of Dan Dolev with Mizuho. Please proceed with your question.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. My question is more specific. If I look at U.S. trends debit versus your competitor, I mean, over the last few quarters, I'm seeing a downward trend in your share of the mix in debit and the picture in credit. Is there anything to call out there? Is there opportunity to improve in debit or am I just missing some very fundamentals here? Again, just U.S. versus your large competitor.
Yeah. Dan, there's nothing fundamentally which is really changing as it relates to our debit business. I'll put that out there in the first place. You know, growth rates obviously are impacted by comps. I think you get that piece. I think you've got to take into consideration that there is a one portfolio, which is a debit portfolio, which is rolling off in the U.S., which was previously announced, which is probably impacting that comparative analysis that you're seeing because obviously we're seeing the detriment of that come through in our debit metrics, and that primarily started in the recent past and will go on through the course of this year. You know, the competitor is likely actually getting the benefit of that. That's probably the reason you're seeing some level of divergence.
Your next question will come from the line of Andrew Jeffrey with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your questions.
Hi. Good morning. Appreciate you taking the question. Michael, I actually have a question on other revenues, value-added services in particular. Ex-acquisition seems that it's decelerating a little bit. I would have expected, you know, perhaps to see that growing faster and certainly approaching the growth in the card business. Can you just comment on kind of puts and takes there and what the long-term sort of trajectory is for value-added services?
Andrew, excellent questions. As you know, we love our services business. It drives growth for us. It's a differentiator, it's a margin increaser, it's all of that. The key focus is on cyber and cyber solutions on one hand, and data analytics and insight solutions. This comes back to the structural trend, by the way. You know, more data, more digital worlds to be kept safe, more insights for all these new people that are, you know, having businesses online on the data analytics side. Fundamentally, there are sound trends here. If you just pick up this quarter and you do the sort of unpacking the numbers that you have just laid out, that is simply timing.
We are expecting, you know, there's nothing to be said that there's anything changing on the growth rates of our business. That will continue. Our teams are fully engaged and, you know, as we look ahead in the guidance that Sachin gave, we assume a strong services growth.
Yeah, Andrew, I'll just kinda add some little bit more color on that just because I think it's important for you as you're thinking about your models going forward to actually factor this in. When we talk about Russia revenues, there are a few things from a Russia revenue standpoint which you might wanna take into consideration, one of which relates to the fact that services was well penetrated in the Russia and Ukraine markets and had strong growth. As you think about, you know, the model and the impact across the different line items, you're going to see impact related to lost services revenue come through in other revenues in the ensuing quarters. That's kind of point number one.
A few other salient pieces on Russia-related revenues as you think about the different line items, yes, we will lose the volumes and transactions. Russia was a fast-growing market. It has low average ticket size, which I kinda mentioned earlier. There's a high degree of contactless penetration. Again, I think these are important things for you all to kinda keep in mind as you think about comps on a going forward basis. And the cross-border issuing out of Russia was mostly high-yielding interregional cross-border issuing. It's also a strong remittances and disbursements market. Why am I sharing all of this with you? Because as you think about the various metrics we've shared across all of these aspects, those will get impacted as Russia stops coming into play in future quarters.
Your next question will come from the line of George Mihalos with Cowen. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Good morning, and thanks for taking my question, guys. Sachin, wanted to ask, you called out currency volatility as obviously being a benefit to first quarter results. Can you isolate what that benefit was in 1Q? Or just I know it's all a volatile time and we're sort of 3 weeks into the next quarter, but how are you thinking about that looking into 2Q?
Yeah, look, George, I called it out because Q1 had unusually high foreign exchange volatility. I mean, the reality is we don't typically talk about this because these numbers kinda go back and forth from a volatility standpoint. There was, you know, unusually high FX volatility in Q1. You know, the outlook from a going forward standpoint is really hard to say. I mean, this is one of those things where I guess as Michael jokes with me, "Sachin, you wouldn't be doing the job if you knew where volatility was going on a forward basis for foreign exchange." So the point is, at the end of the day, we've tried taking our best assumptions on a holistic basis for our business to share with you what our thoughts are from a full year and a Q2 basis on net revenue.
Very hard to predict what the outlook going forward is gonna be. You know, unusually high volatility does help us. The other thing to keep in mind is since it's related to cross-border volumes, as cross-border volumes come back, that combined with unusually high volatility has that much more of an impact.
Jemiria, I think we have time for one more question.
Okay. Our final question will come from the line of Jason Kupferberg with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks, guys. It's a quick one. Just in terms of your expectation for cross-border travel relative to 2019 levels, last quarter you were expecting to be at 100% by the end of this year. You're already at 110% in April. What's your updated assumption on that?
Jason, as I mentioned, we're assuming improving trends vis-à-vis compared to 2019 as we go forward. We're not sharing a specific number for what that looks like in the second quarter or the end of the year. We've built in our expectations in terms of the revenue guidance I've shared with you, our thoughts around how that trend takes place. You know, the combination of that plus consumer spending and what the improving trajectory in consumer spending is, it's all factored into the numbers.
Can we get a directional sense on rebates and incentives just for the rest of the year?
The thing I'll mention to you on rebates and incentives is the following, which is, we have a rich pipeline of deals. We continue to execute on that, as you heard from Michael, in terms of some of the wins which we had recently. Obviously you get the benefit of improving cross-border trends to play through, in terms of lower amounts of rebates and incentives impacting that. The last point I'll make on rebates and incentives is in Q1 we had this one-time benefit relating to the non-renewal of our Russian customer agreement, which you should not expect the benefit of that to come through on a going forward basis.
Net-net, I would tell you that, you know, a lot of this is gonna be, you know, dependent on what the timing of deals are, how we put those new and renewed deals into play, and what the recovery of cross-border is gonna be.
Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Sachin. Michael?
All right, thanks for your questions. Insightful questions as always. Thank you for support for the company. Just a thought from me. Here we are, we're thinking that we're gonna get out of Omicron, and then a few days later we have an invasion in Europe. For our teams around the world, it continues to be a never-ending marathon. I just wanna extend the thanks to everybody in the Mastercard team. With that, we'll see you next quarter. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now-