Good morning. My name is Julianne. I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Mastercard Incorporated Q1 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question- and- answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Please only press star one once to queue up for a question, as pressing star one multiple times may affect your position in the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one. Thank you. Mr. Devin Corr, Head of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, Julianne. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2026 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 sections 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 would 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 facts that could affect future performance are summarized at the end of our 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 will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Michael Miebach.
Thank you, Devin. Morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We are a quarter into the new year. Much has happened, so much opportunity lies ahead. You've seen the release this morning, let's get into the highlights. Building on 2025 momentum, 2026 is off to an excellent start. Net revenue growth was up 12% and net income up 15% in the first quarter on a year-over-year non-GAAP currency neutral basis. Looking at the macro picture, the economic foundation remains generally supportive with healthy underlying consumer and business spending. However, the backdrop remains uncertain, driven by geopolitical tensions, which has put some pressure on cross-border travel. Overall, labor markets continue to be balanced and wages are still outpacing inflation in most major markets.
As we've done consistently, we are monitoring the situation in the Middle East and the global economy. We will adjust as needed. Quarter one results were supported by the healthy spending I noted. Of course, our team's strong execution. Above all, this quarter continues to reflect the strength and resilience of our network. We have built and diversified our network over decades, navigating and innovating through every cycle. It's a foundation spanning four pillars. One, unparalleled global reach. We have hundreds of millions of acceptance locations and digital access points across 150 currencies. The last five years alone, we have grown acceptance locations nearly 70%. Mastercard powers payments when and where you need us. That scale brings participants into a single network where the more activity that flows through it, the more data is available and the more valuable it becomes for everyone.
That drives the ability to capture and extend the secular opportunity. Two, our franchise rules. Our franchise helps our network operate with consistency. The rules bring trust and protection for all participants, ensuring transactions are secure, merchants are paid, disputes can be resolved, and people have zero liability for unauthorized transactions. That trust allows global acceptance at scale. Three, best-in-class technology. We invest to make payments faster and simpler. Core card network upgrades are already delivering faster transaction flow and near real-time settlement. These capabilities are live in South Africa today, already driving new wins and incremental switching. We look to extend into other markets over time. Remember, our payments infrastructure goes well beyond cards, including account-to-account, and we're now further embedding digital assets. Four, our differentiated value-added services and solutions.
Powered by data from our networks and AI, we have curated unique services that make the network secure, drive more payments, and help our customers make smarter decisions. Many of these services are tied to and brought to market through the network. That's our virtuous cycle, strengthening the franchise and improving outcomes for customers. It's that strong foundation that uniquely positions us to power and protect tomorrow's digital economy, even as innovations emerge and the macro environment changes. It's our differentiated services powered by our data and how we approach partnerships that underscore why customers continue to choose Mastercard. Let's take a moment on recent key innovations, agentic commerce and stable coins. On agentic, the ecosystem continues to evolve. Our payment solutions are ready, and we are engaged shaping what comes next with key players, including Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and other partners across the ecosystem.
We're deepening our partnership with OpenAI, reinforcing their use of Mastercard Agent Pay, working to enable agent-to-agent payments, and collaborating to embed our services across their solutions while using their tools as an enterprise customer. I'm also happy to share that nearly all Mastercards around the world are now enabled for Mastercard Agent Pay. We continue to develop our agent-related services. In quarter one, we launched Verifiable Intent, a tamper-resistant record of what a user authorized when an AI agent acts on their behalf. In fact, the FIDO Alliance is now using it as a foundation for setting security standards in this space. Earlier this month, we announced a partnership with Crossmint, a leading blockchain infrastructure platform. Crossmint will integrate Mastercard Agent Pay and Verifiable Intent to enable secure Mastercard transactions for AI agents in its ecosystem.
This will initially launch on the OpenClaw platform with plans to expand. That's a lot of moving pieces, as agent-driven commerce gains traction, our network is there with tokenized credentials, powering the payments, bringing the security and trust and reach that everyone is looking for. It's very clear there's even more incremental opportunity in transactions and in services over time. Onto stablecoins, another rail to complement and expand our network. We leverage our existing card rails to make it easier for people to spend their digital asset holdings with cards. In quarter one, we saw spend growth continue at a healthy clip across our crypto co-brands as cardholders gain access to our acceptance, protection, and so on. This quarter, OKX, a leading global crypto exchange, is expanding its Mastercard crypto card program into Europe.
Remember, we also enable purchases of digital assets using Mastercard, and we allow stablecoin settlement, and we integrated stablecoins into Mastercard Move. We also see a broader need to connect stablecoin rails to fiat rails. As digital assets scale, complexity grows. The need for interoperable, reliable, and trusted infrastructure grows. That is why we are excited about our planned acquisition of BVNK. We do not see a change in how consumers pay. Cards continue to deliver a seamless experience, but given the speed, 24/7 availability, and programmability, we see clear potential for stablecoin technology, especially when paired with our network. In use cases like payouts, remittances, me-to-me, and cross-border B2B payments. BVNK has leading technology that serves as an important enabler to send, receive, convert, and hold stablecoins. They also directly address the interoperability challenge in digital assets.
They bring together liquidity providers, stablecoin issuers, market makers, and more. BVNK also holds important hard-to-get licenses and offers critical compliance and regulatory tooling. When you bring together the strength of our network and you add continuous innovation, including most recently in agentic commerce and digital assets, you see continued leadership in payments. That fuels the virtual cycle across our three strategic pillars: consumer payments, commercial flows, and value-add services and solutions. Let's take them one by one. Turning to the first pillar, consumer payments. I'll start with two exciting portfolio wins that reinforce the enduring value of Mastercard across the globe. One with CIB in Egypt. Our partnership will expand meaningfully with new markets and services. This includes the conversion of an affluent portfolio and the expected issuance of over 5 million new Mastercards over the term of the deal.
The second is a renewal and expansion of our partnership with Westpac, one of the largest banks in Australia, putting Mastercards in the hands of more Westpac customers than ever before. We also continue to see strong momentum in the affluent space as issuers look to differentiate and deepen relationships with high-spend customers. Since launching World Legend last year, U.S. World Legend cards have demonstrated higher overall spend and more than 3 x higher cross-border spend on an average monthly basis compared to the U.S. World Elite portfolio. Two growing value propositions that ring true to the segments they were designed for. Still early days in bringing World Legend cards to market, but very encouraging. Our affluent value proposition, including the new globally connected Mastercard Collection, is resonating around the globe.
In North America, our new World Legend has been launched by Rogers Bank, with Saudi National Bank to launch in the coming months. Mastercard will now be the network of choice on the new United Airlines Canada co-brand program. In Latin America, Bancolombia and BTG in Brazil are also launching new World Legend portfolios. We are excited to partner with Aeromexico in bringing their co-brand to Mastercard. In Asia, HSBC Hong Kong is launching a set of affluent products, including World Legend. In Indonesia, Bank Mandiri is launching a new private banking card in the super-affluent segment. These card wins reinforce the importance of offering payment choice. We continue to scale Mastercard One Credential, a single Mastercard credential linked to multiple funding sources such as credit, debit, and installments. We're launching with SoFi its SoFi Smart Card.
Through partnerships with Fiserv and Blossom, Mastercard One Credential will be more easily accessible to community banks and credit unions. Turning to the second pillar, commercial and new payment flows. We continue to deliver value by building on our strengths. In the U.S. alone, small business fuel nearly half of GDP. We're proud to say that the U.S. Amazon Small Business co-brand card issued by U.S. Bank will move to Mastercard. That is very exciting. These partners saw value in Mastercard's differentiated SME offerings, including easy savings, analytics tools, and our overall partnership approach. There's so much potential in commercial, and we're doubling down in segments where we already lead. Fleet and distribution continue to be longstanding strengths for Mastercard, especially in the U.S., where we are the partner of choice for most of the industry's largest fleet players.
This quarter, we added multiple new U.S. partners in the segment, including Free, which enables card-based invoice payments for wholesale food distributors. We are extending our capabilities outside of the U.S., where our expertise in the space helped secure ryd, a European digital fleet and in-car payment system operator, converting its closed-loop fleet program to open-loop Mastercard. On B2B travel flows, issuers continue to select Mastercard for seamless B2B travel payments using virtual cards for their online travel agency customers. While external events might drive slower growth in the short term, we have long-term conviction in the space and continue to pursue it given the sizable opportunity. This quarter, we signed Highnote in the U.S., Travelsoft and Juniper in Europe, and Bula in Brazil, further securing commercial travel as an area of strength. At the same time, Mastercard Move continues to scale.
We power financial institutions with the ability to offer near real-time money movement with transparency and with access to our more than 17 billion endpoints. This quarter, we extended our connections with Bank of Shanghai, supporting SME trade, international tuition, and remittances into and out of China. We will now further penetrate U.S. insurance disbursement flows with a renewed agreement with One Inc. Recently introduced in APAC, Mastercard Move will now power Mastercard Global Commerce Suite for Small Businesses. This solution helps banks support small business cross-border money movement needs by bringing together payments with collections and expense management in one solution. Turning to value-add services and solutions, demand remains high, and we continue to drive strong growth. VASS is built on our data, curated into differentiated products and delivered alongside our payment network.
We combine proprietary global real-time transaction data with petabytes of permission data from our services and solutions. That scale and quality of our data power smarter insights, stronger fraud tools, and better outcomes for customers, especially in an AI-driven world. In March, we announced a new foundational generative AI model leveraging capabilities from NVIDIA. Trained on our vast data sets, it will help anticipate behaviors beyond the scope of traditional models, spotting unusual activity, predicting where a cardholder may spend next, and signaling shifts in consumer behavior. These insights can then be embedded across our products or power new use cases. This early-stage work is very exciting. It's not just about the future. Our services are already helping customers solve real needs today, including with many solutions that are unique to us. You've seen how Mastercard has modernized dispute resolution over the years.
That innovation continues to provide value and trust to our customers. Dispute resolution includes our unique network tools powered by Ethoca that help connect issuers and merchants post-transactions. Collectively, Ethoca products grew around 25% year-over-year last quarter. Checkout.com will embed Ethoca alerts into their global digital experience and enable merchants to enroll directly in pre-chargeback dispute resolutions. This is also a great example of one-to-many distribution. For issuing customers, Ethoca Consumer Clarity enhances merchant details and enables receipt visibility, curbing friendly fraud, which third-party research estimates costs issuers and merchants in the U.S. over $100 billion annually. Elsewhere, Westpac and Capitec will now leverage some of these network-agnostic services as well as subscription management capabilities from Minna. Cybersecurity is mission-critical, and the stakes keep rising. As you know, we acquired Recorded Future in 2024, a leader in this space.
Last year, we launched Mastercard Threat Intelligence, bringing Mastercard and Recorded Future capabilities together. In a short period of time, more than 500 customers are already engaged. Using the product, partners have taken down malicious domains responsible for the payment card theft impacting over 10,000 e-commerce sites. That's tangible value. In open finance, we power use cases from account opening and smarter lending to simple, account-to-account payments and better cash flow visibility for small businesses. We continue to see traction across all. In healthcare, Optum Financial initially deployed our account opening verification services for HSA accounts, and they are now expanding into additional account types. Webster Bank's HSA Bank selected Mastercard Open Finance to support both identity verification and account linking, making onboarding increasingly seamless for its members.
That brings me to consulting and marketing services, offerings we have been growing for many years, built around payments expertise and fueled by our unique data to solve customer problems. We are enabling highly targeted, insight-driven actions that generate measurable ROI. This is evident. Nearly three-quarters of our customers from 2024 returned to use these services again last year and increased their usage by more than 20% year-over-year. In fact, many customers embed these services within customer business agreements. ECBA-linked services directly support growth, drive payment volume, increase customer acquisition, and so on. Separately, this quarter, Intesa Sanpaolo expanded its services partnership with us to boost card penetration and usage, combining advanced analytics and portfolio optimization with always-on marketing across both Intesa and its digital bank, Isybank.
That's a lot to fit into one quarter. All these examples reinforce how we continue to execute and deliver on a proven strategy. We are a strong global network, deeply leveraging proprietary data extended through innovation, scaled through partnership, diversified through our products and services. Thank you for your continued trust and partnership. With that, I'll turn it over to Sachin.
Great. Thanks, Michael. Turning to page three, which shows our financial performance for the first quarter on a currency-neutral basis, excluding where applicable, Special items and the impact of gains and losses on our equity investments. Net revenue was up 12%, reflecting continued growth in our payment network and our value-added services and solutions. Operating expenses increased 9% and operating income was up 13%. Net income and EPS increased 15% and 18% respectively, driven primarily by the strong operating income growth in the quarter. EPS was $4.60, which includes a $0.10 contribution from share repurchases. During the quarter, we repurchased $4 billion worth of stock and an additional $1.7 billion through April 27, 2026. This quarter, we accelerated the pace of our share buybacks given current valuation levels and our strong conviction in our long-term growth potential.
Now, turning to page four, where I'll speak to the growth rates of our key volume drivers for the first quarter on a local currency basis. Worldwide gross dollar volume, or GDV, increased by 7% year-over-year. In the U.S., GDV increased by 4%, with credit growth of 8% and debit growth of 1%. Excluding the impacts from the migration of the Capital One debit portfolio, our U.S. debit GDV growth would have been 7%. The migration of the debit portfolio is now basically complete. Outside of the U.S., volume increased 9%, with credit growth of 9% and debit growth of 8%. Overall, cross-border volume increased 13% globally for the quarter, reflecting continued growth in both travel and non-travel related cross-border spending.
As one would expect, starting in March, we began to see some impact on cross-border travel from the conflict in the Middle East. Turning now to page five, switched transactions grew 9% year-over-year in Q1. Excluding the impacts from the migration of the Capital One debit portfolio, our switched transaction growth would have been 10%. We continue to drive contactless penetration, which in Q1 stood at 78% of all in-person switched purchase transactions. This is up 5 BPT since the same period last year. In addition, card growth was 5%. Globally, there are 3.7 billion Mastercard and Maestro-branded cards issued. Turning to slide six for a look into our net revenue growth rates for the first quarter, discussed on a currency neutral basis. Payment network net revenue increased 8%, primarily driven by domestic and cross-border transaction and volume growth.
It also includes growth in rebates and incentives. Value-added services and solutions net revenue increased 18%, primarily driven by growth in our underlying drivers, strong demand across security solutions, digital and authentication, business and market insights, and consumer acquisition and engagement, and pricing. Now let's turn to page seven to discuss key metrics related to the payment network. Again, all growth rates are described on a currency neutral basis unless otherwise noted. Looking quickly at each key metric. Domestic assessments were up 6%, while worldwide GDV grew 7%. The difference is primarily driven by mix, partially offset by pricing. Cross-border assessments increased 18%, while cross-border volumes increased 13%. The 5 PBT difference is driven primarily by pricing in international markets. Transaction processing assessments were up 15%, while switched transactions grew 9%.
The 6 PBT difference is primarily due to favorable mix and pricing, slightly offset by lower revenue from FX volatility. Other network assessments were $277 million this quarter. Moving on to page eight, you can see that on a non-GAAP currency neutral basis, excluding special items, total adjusted operating expenses increased 9%. The growth in operating expenses was primarily driven by increased spending to support various strategic initiatives, including investing in our infrastructure, geographic expansion, and enhancing and delivering our products and services, as well as the increase in foreign exchange activity-related expenses within the quarter. Turning now to page nine, let me comment on the operating metric trends for Q1 and the first four weeks of April. As we look across Q1 and April, growth rates of our operating metrics were impacted by timing of holidays, namely Ramadan and Easter.
March would have seen the benefits from the timing while February and April saw a negative impact. Looking at the Q1 operating metrics on a sequential basis. Switched metrics were generally in line with Q4 and underlying spend remains stable. Of note, U.S. switched volume was flat sequentially as the strength in consumer and business spend offset the impact from the migration of Capital One's debit portfolio in the quarter. Excluding Capital One on a like-for-like basis, U.S. switched volume growth was over 1 PPT higher in Q1 as compared to Q4. Now on to switched transactions. Sorry, excluding the migration of Capital One debit, growth was generally in line with Q4. Moving to our cross-border metrics, our overall cross-border volume remains healthy with growth at 13% in the first quarter.
Cross-border card not present ex travel grew at 18% and remains strong. The sequential decline in cross-border travel was due primarily to the conflict in the Middle East and portfolio shifts. Now looking specifically at cross-border travel for the first four weeks of April, the sequential decline from Q1 is due to an acceleration of the impact of the conflict, the portfolio shifts, and the negative impact from the timing I just mentioned. None of these factors relate to any fundamental change, and underlying consumer and business spend remains healthy. Turning to page 10, I wanted to share our thoughts for the remainder of the year. We delivered another solid quarter fueled by the strength of our payment network and value-added services capabilities.
Despite elevated geopolitical risks, the macro economy has remained largely supportive, with healthy underlying consumer spending and the fundamentals of our business remain strong. With that said, we are operating in a period of heightened uncertainty, magnified by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Since the outbreak of the conflict at the end of February, we have seen restrictions on travel and a reduction in the world's energy supply. As I noted earlier, we are seeing impacts from that in our cross-border travel metrics. Let's take a step back. We are a global company, and we are heavily diversified across geographies, products, consumer segments, services, and so on. This diversification reduces concentration risk while enabling us to deliver consistently on solid top-line and bottom-line growth.
While the conflict in the Middle East is a headwind, our global diversified business positions us well to sustain growth both in the short and long term. We are confident in our strategy, delivering value to our customers and partners across the globe, and innovating to power the next wave of digital payments. As we look at Q2 and the full year, our base case assumes underlying consumer spending remains healthy outside of the impact of the conflict in the Middle East. We assume the conflict ends in Q2, and the related headwinds will be largest in Q2 and then progressively recover as we move through the second half of the year.
As it relates to our expectations for the second quarter of 2026, year-over-year net revenue growth is expected to be at the low end of low double-digits range on a currency-neutral basis, excluding inorganic activity. This includes our current estimates for the impacts from the conflict in the Middle East, without which we would have expected Q2 growth to be generally in line with the first quarter on a currency-neutral basis. We expect minimal impact from a disposition that we anticipate to close within the quarter and a tailwind of approximately 1 PPT-2 PPT from foreign exchange. From an operating expense standpoint, we expect Q2 growth to be at the low end of low double-digits range versus a year ago, again, on a currency-neutral basis, excluding inorganic activity.
We anticipate a 0 PPT-1 PPT benefit from the disposition, while foreign exchange is forecasted to be a headwind of approximately 0 PPT-1 PPT for the quarter. On other income and expense, in Q2, we expect an expense of approximately $150 million. This excludes gains and losses on our equity investments, which are excluded from our non-GAAP metrics. This higher sequential expense is primarily driven by the following. First, Q1 came in better than expected, aided by a few one-time items. We do not expect these to repeat in the second quarter. Second, we expect lower cash balances and higher debt levels in the second quarter. Cash balances tend to be seasonally lower in the second quarter, and as I noted earlier, we have accelerated the pace of our share repurchases.
Lastly, a one-time unfavorable impact from the disposition I mentioned earlier. As it relates to our expectations for the full year 2026, net revenue growth remains at the high end of a low double digits range on a currency-neutral basis, excluding inorganic activity. We anticipate minimal impact from the planned disposition and a tailwind of approximately 1.5 PPT from foreign exchange. From an operating expense standpoint, we expect growth to be at the low double digits range versus a year ago on a currency-neutral basis, excluding inorganic activity. We expect a 0.5 PPT-1 PPT tailwind from the disposition and a headwind of 0.5 PPT-1 PPT from foreign exchange on a full year basis. Finally, we expect a non-GAAP tax rate in the range of 20%-21% for both Q2 and the full year.
As a reminder, the Q1 tax rate was lower primarily due to discrete tax benefits, including those related to share-based payments. With that, I will turn the call back over to Devin.
Thank you. Julianne, you may now open up for questions.
Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Please only press star one once to queue up for a question as pressing star one multiple times may affect your position in the queue. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Will Nance from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hey, guys, thank you for taking the question. Michael, I wanted to ask on the VAS strategy and the growth you've been putting up there. I think there's been a focus on how you differentiate yourself with the strategy. I think historically, you know, Mastercard has been very forward-leaning on embracing new networks and things like A to A payments. Can you talk about the evolution of that strategy, maybe in the context of the planned divestiture, how some of these types of activities fit into the broader strategy around VAS? Thank you.
Right. Will, great question. We've always believed in consumer choice when it comes to payments and business choice when it comes to payments. It's clear that cards is a great answer for P2M, but it's not the answer for everything. There's a set of dedicated use cases and a lot of volume out there for us to go after to apply our services. That was originally the idea to go into a, what we called at the time, a multi-rail proposition account-to-account. You know that history, acquisition of VocaLink and so forth, and various other real-time payments assets around the world, and then we.
Exported the stack to run about 12 such systems around the world right now. That strategy still holds. There's no question about that because real-time is very much in focus. A lot of governments choose real-time payment systems to go and facilitate payments of all types across their respective markets. We're a, you know, a known and respected partner in this space. Strategy hasn't changed. Where we're really evolving is to ensure that we find more and more services that we can apply to these payments. The franchise rules are different in that space than they are in a card space. You know, something like cybersecurity is particularly in focus.
As account-to-account fraud and account scams are rising, our Account-to-Account Protect solution is being an excellent example of how we found a way where we can rally a market and drive value for us and for the market. Cybersecurity is in focus. Generally, this gives us a seat at a table with government in the current world where more countries are inward-looking, looking for more resilient infrastructure that puts us also in a very unique position. Strategy continues where we said we're not, you know, looking into grow a lot more new geographies because we're in the markets that we wanna be in. U.S., U.K., Thailand, Philippines, large economies where this business runs at scale and very profitably for us.
Will, as such, and I very quickly just wanna clarify because you alluded to the disposition. The disposition I referred to in my commentary relates to SessionM, which is our loyalty business, which is one of the acquisitions we had done a few years ago, and that's the sale which was announced a couple of months ago. That's what I was referring to in the second part.
I glanced over that other market rumor because we don't comment on market rumors.
Thanks for taking the question. Appreciate it.
Sure.
Our next question comes from Sanjay Sakhrani from KBW. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning. Sachin, I wanna talk about the assumptions for the outlook on the war ending, in 2Q.
Mm-hmm.
I'm just curious if you could just elaborate on the assumptions you're making on cross-border. I assume that's sort of where the biggest impact is. You know, where the offsets are that are helping you sort of raise the guidance because I'm sure some other things are outperforming and offsetting it. Just one follow-on on the portfolio shift point you made. Does that impact cross-border for a year now going forward? I'm just curious if you could just elaborate on that. Thank you.
Sure. Sanjay, first I'll kinda, you know, kick off by saying we have taken what we believe to be our best estimate as it relates to our base case, as it relates to the conflict, you know, ending in Q2. Because we had to predicate this on some assumption, and that's what we shared with you right here. Let's just start with that piece of it. The impact is most pronounced and assumed to be most pronounced in cross-border travel. That is a correct statement on your part. The second point I'd make there is that the impact would be, in our assumptions, most pronounced in the second quarter.
While there will be some impact in Q3 and Q4, we expect that there will be a gradual recovery, a progressive recovery, which will take place in through Q3 and Q4 based on the assumption that the conflict ends in Q2. That's kind of two things I wanted to kind of just mention. You also asked a part 1B question to that, which was what are the offsets? I think what you're asking is, you know, our full-year guide, which by the way on a currency neutral basis is basically unchanged, right? The increase you're seeing in the full-year guide is primarily being driven by a change in FX assumptions for the year. On a currency neutral basis, it's unchanged to what I'd shared, you know, a quarter ago. Anyway, notwithstanding the fact. You know, look, we started the year strong.
Consumer spending is healthy. We're executing on our strategy. We had a first quarter where we outperformed our own expectations. You know, we're off to a good start in the year. That obviously provides a little bit of a buffer relative to three months ago versus today, notwithstanding the fact that there are other things which have moved around, such as the impact of the conflict, which is kinda offsetting, you know, that as well. That's kinda component number one, which we've gotta keep in mind. The other piece I'd mention is that, look, I mean, as you go through the year, a few things to keep in mind, I think you know this already, Sanjay, is that in Q2 of last year we had the highest levels of FX volatility.
That creates the biggest headwind in Q2 of this year, right? We have some headwind from FX volatility in Q3, but it's less than what was there in Q2. That's something to keep in mind. In Q4 we had more normalized levels of FX volatility, so the headwind kind of dissipates as you go across the, you know, the end of the year. That's kind of the second point. The last point I'd make is that from a value-added service and solution standpoint, which represents roughly 40% of the revenues of the company, look, the business continues to perform. We delivered 18% currency neutral growth in the first quarter, another solid quarter, and, you know, we're seeing strong demand for those capabilities.
That's something which, again, as I think about the rest of the year, we'll have to keep on executing, and that's kinda based in the assumptions and the guidance that I've shared with you.
If I can just add one point on that. I think it's a great question, important question. What happens here with cross-border side is a general shift in spending patterns. Our customers are coming to us and say, "Well, what do you see in your data? How is spending shifting? Where else is it going? Where do we meet our customers and their customers in terms of solutions that they need?" This is something that we took to, you know, as science back in COVID, because at that time, you know, recovery insights were kind of a key thing. We now have kind of like crisis insights. Within 24 hours.
We had a website up for our customers in the Middle East to say, Here's shifting spending patterns. Take a look at it, let's work on it together.
Sanjay, I know you asked the question also as part of your question 1C was, the impact of portfolio shifts. Yeah, you're right. I mean, the impact of portfolio shifts will stay with us for quarters. Again, you know, every portfolio is a different migration schedule, but that kind of factors in there. You are seeing a more pronounced impact in travel because some of the portfolios were more travel heavy, so that's something to kind of keep in mind.
Our next question comes from Harshita Rawat from Bernstein. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, good morning. I want to ask about switch transaction growth, Sachin and Michael. Historically it used to grow kind of in the low double digit to low teen range. More recently the growth has decelerated a little bit to 9%. I know there's 1 PPT of Cap One debit in there. Maybe talk about some of the other drivers within that switch transaction growth and some deceleration versus history. As we think about the high end of low double digit medium term revenue objective, maybe talk about the growing importance of value added services in that algorithm, and remind us about kind of your conviction in the sustained strong growth of that. Thank you.
Sure, Harshita. On your question on switch transactions, I think you kind of got the first part, which I shared in my prepared remarks, which is adjusted for the Capital One migration, we grew at about 10%. I think your question was a little bit beyond the fact that it's 10%. You said we were growing at higher rates previously. I think one of the bigger factors that influences switch transaction growth is the mix of our portfolio. I'll give you a real life example, right? Back in the days when we were operating in Russia, before we suspended our operations in Russia, right, we had significantly higher growth in switch transactions.
At that point in time when we suspended operations, one of the things which I called out was that recognize that this market is a low average ticket size market. The fact that we no longer do business there impacts our switch transaction growth rates because average ticket size kind of plays a part, point number one. Then if you just extend that logic through to different parts of the globe, depending on where we're seeing more and less growth and what the average ticket size is, that influences what our switch transaction growth is. The reason I say this is because mixes in geography are going to impact where our switch transaction growth is. Fundamentally, what's going on in terms of the imperative for the business to continue to focus on driving switch transaction remains.
Case in point, you know, for the longest time we were not switching transactions in Japan. We're now switching transactions in Japan. We were previously not switching transactions in a meaningful way in Mexico. That's something which has actually started to happen. You know that as a matter of fact that the company is very focused on driving greater switch transaction growth for all the reasons we've kind of mentioned in the past, which is it not only generates revenue, it provides data. When you get data you can deliver value added service and solutions which drives incremental revenue. Really important. Just as another metric point so that you're aware, in our most recent quarter our proportion of switch transactions is now north of 70%. The reality is we are executing on the switch transaction strategy.
We continue to remain very focused and believe that's an important area, especially in light of what we shared with you at Investor Day 1.5 year ago, when we talked about the sizable opportunity which remains from a secular standpoint in terms of transactions which still remain to be digitized. Very much a focus area for us.
Yeah. You mentioned the 70%. You know, in 2020 it was 60%, that's a very sizable increase. You know, if you, if we just think for a moment where it's coming from. It's coming a lot from. We are, I mentioned it earlier, a lot of countries are looking to have their own payment systems. There's many domestic schemes out there. It turns out that, you know, digital capabilities are really hard to do and they're really hard to scale. That's part of our strategy and that's how we're winning volume. It's a better proposition from a safety security perspective, tokenization. Those are all things that we can bring to those countries, that is where what the biggest driver is.
This is one of the key metrics for our company and our people to bring across the value that we bring there and then compete against these domestic schemes. Significant driver, and it has a lot of other digital capabilities. When we talk Click to Pay, when we talk contactless, various other things that are just really hard to do for these kind of systems. That brings switching onto us and that's the surge that's fueling the services opportunity in turn.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Adam Frisch from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thanks guys. A quick clarification and then a question. Getting a bunch of questions from investors, Sachin, if the war will go longer or near term impact were deemed more destructive, what's the calculus on how that might impact your outlook, if at all? My question is on stablecoin. A shout out to Devin and Jordan for a terrific call explaining the rationale for the BVNK deal a few weeks ago. Do you feel like the mounting challenges with getting the CLARITY Act passed in D.C. delays the timeframe for the industry in general, or is there enough motion to keep the momentum going and having BVNK's capabilities helps you shape the trajectory a little bit more? Thank you.
Adam, on the first question, I really am not gonna go into multiple scenarios of how the war plays out, right? I kind of shared with you what the base case is and what the impact is. I also shared with you in my prepared remarks what the impact would have been had it not been for the war or rather the conflict occurring in Q2, where I said basically, you know, had it not been for the conflict our growth rate in Q2 would have been generally in line with what we had in Q1. You know, look, the reality is. Things will move. We do understand that, you know, the conflict is something which is outside of our control, like Michael mentioned. It's not like we're sitting on our hands.
We're working with our customers to try and find opportunities where we can be helpful to them and even in this environment. If it's useful, maybe I can just size for you really for the impacted countries, which is, let's take the GCC and Israel. From a cross-border volume standpoint, GCC and Israel represent roughly 6% of our cross-border volumes. This is both inbound and outbound. You have to take both into consideration because if you don't, we have impact from a issuing and an acquiring standpoint. It's important for you to just get a general size of what we're talking about here.
Good. Coming to the other, or the actual question, versus the clarification. Stablecoins, BVNK, CLARITY Act, a lot going on. First of all, I just wanna go back to what I said when I shared our excitement about the BVNK acquisition. Fundamentally, what we see is that stablecoins and tokenized deposits, actually, not just stablecoins, are here to stay. They're gonna be an important part of the financial ecosystem, the financial fabric going forward. We believe that tokenized money will occupy a meaningful part of the money movement in the future. The use cases, I talked about them, B2B global payouts, B2B Me2Me, that's like funding my own wallet, and all these things are gonna be use cases that will be there. We have some regulatory clarity.
We had it with the GENIUS Act. There's some such regulation in other markets, so it's not holding us back. We see it in the volumes that is happening. I talked about healthy clip in crypto. This extends into stablecoins to start with. Already there are use cases, so we're moving forward on that, which is why the timing of BVNK was important because it feels it's this unlock moment at this time. We also think, that when this world is, you know, is growing at a higher speed, let's assume the CLARITY Act is coming through, and then we'll be even more momentum on this. We're gonna face a world that is a world of multiplicity.
There's gonna be more coins, it's gonna be more change, it's gonna be more non-dollar denominated coins out there, et cetera, et cetera. That will bring about a future where, you know, interoperability, and trust and licensing and compliance needs are super critical, and that is where BVNK is a leader. That is, you know, in my customer conversations, everybody is asking, "What are you doing? How can we work together? What do I do first?" We talk about BVNK. Well, it's not closed yet, I should say that. We're very excited about it because we already see the demand. Everybody's trying to figure this out regardless of CLARITY Act, yes or no. On the CLARITY Act, it would establish a clear regulatory framework for digital assets. That would be good.
Can't be sitting here and speculating when it happens, but it doesn't hold us back. We believe that BVNK puts us in a position in-house natively to drive that interoperability and trust layer in that digital assets world, stablecoins, tokenized bank deposits, et cetera. Very exciting, and it truly sets us apart.
Thanks, guys.
Our next question comes from Tien-Tsin Huang from JP Morgan. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hey, thanks a lot. Just want to ask on the agentic side, if that's okay, and Mastercard Agent Pay. Michael, you talked about some of the partners and some of the activity on the ground, but can you just give us a little bit more detail on, you know, volumes or any surprises with respect to actual activity or actual demand? I'm curious if you were to maybe talk about it in the context of who's pushing the hardest across all the players in the four-party model. What are you listening to for clues on how to invest harder, et cetera?
Right. On agentic, this all kind of really got into motion in April last year, just about a year ago. This is kind of when we started to get out there with Agent Pay. Other protocols were there. This is when Google and others, you know, Microsoft, started to put out protocols that are commerce-oriented protocols. That's, that was a push for those players, LLM players, people getting in, seeing a tremendous opportunity for them. And then the payment world, us with Agent Pay, we got in and say, Well, we gotta facilitate those transactions, and we wanna deliver everything that people are generally used to from us in, a regular transaction. That's what Agent Pay does, leveraging our tokenization capabilities. We pushed equally hard.
In terms of where volumes are, we're still at early stage, that is also true. Because a few things were not quite in place yet. The question of what goes wrong, I talked earlier about disputes. What goes wrong in an agent, in an agent transaction? How do you prove that? The significance of Verifiable Intent cannot be underestimated. That is a really important step. We worked on this together with Google. That is now a standard. Again, part of the urgency needs to be, we gotta be in there with the trust that we bring and make sure that the standards are there. That's what we're doing with great urgency, that is where our urgency lies. We're ready to see when the, when the volume comes. Where do we see some of the upside?
New use cases, you know, spreading baskets on the consumer side, transaction opportunity. Of course, there could be more services opportunities inside tokens, and the line would be such an example. All of this is happening, and then I haven't even started to talk about agents in the B2B space. You heard us talk about Agent Suite, which we started to launch.
Where we're gonna get into the business of building agents with our customers in the B2B space, et cetera. Early stage on B2B, earlier than on the consumer side, but I would think this is the much bigger opportunity, and it fits right into our focus on commercial payments. Early stage ecosystem building, covering your bases, that's what we're doing.
Our next question comes from Darrin Peller from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hey, thanks guys. Just first a quick follow-up, Sachin, just when you think about the way to normalize cross-border or the effects of Ramadan and Easter shifting or any other normalization, just to give us a sense of what you see as sustainable given the portfolio shift. I'm curious if you could help us quantify that. Then Michael, I want to ask about Mastercard Threat Intelligence more broadly. You know, we're all hearing about instances of fraud picking up around AI on payments. Are you seeing that inflection demand really pick up pace for your value-added services and offerings around cyber and fraud? I mean, you know, clearly that could be a nice boost sustainably for VAS.
Darrin, I'll go first on the, on your clarifying question. I'm gonna actually stay with the cross-border travel metric, and I'm gonna actually speak to the growth rate for Q1 compared to the first four weeks of April, right? 'Cause that 8% number that you see there going down to 2% growth is driven by primarily three things. Number one, conflict, number two, portfolio shifts, number three, the timing of Easter, right, and Ramadan. These are the three factors. You know, I kinda laid them out in order of significance as well, right? Don't assume that the conflict is the biggest and then the other two are insignificant. It's kinda generally directionally the three of them are the key contributors to what you're seeing there.
I think the more important thing, honestly, Darrin, out here is that by its very definition, what you're seeing, let's take each one of them, you know, individually. Conflict out of, out of our control, don't expect for that to stay with us over the long term. Fundamentally, nothing challenges the cross-border value prop as it stands. Number two, as it relates to the portfolio shifts, look, we're very clear in our mind in terms of what our approach on portfolio wins and losses are. We want to win the right kinds of portfolios. We already maintain that. We've always maintained that, and we will continue to be very disciplined on that.
You're gonna see wins, which you'll see more of, and on occasion you'll see things which will actually move away from us, which is part of what's going on from a portfolio shift standpoint. I won't spend a lot of time on timing because timing of Ramadan and Easter is what it is, right? They're, you know, week-over-week you're gonna see movements and changes on that. That's, that's what I was gonna share with you there.
In every one of these calls we talk about wins and losses and shifts. If you just think about what I said earlier, Aeromexico, United Airlines Canada, four travel agency wins. There is a lot going on in the space. We've historically been focused and continue to see it as a strength, and we're leaning in on that, but not always at all prices. Good. On the safety security piece and Recorded Future, and, you know, the rising of stakes in a world, in an AI-powered world, that's absolutely true. We hear this everywhere. We see it everywhere. It's not that new, it's just rising.
When we looked at Recorded Future and said, you know, our historic position in being a leader in fraud management and payment fraud management expanded to a multi-layer strategy with RiskRecon, where we looked at general cybersecurity stance of smaller businesses, that was a big part of our business. We're not just fraud any longer. We're already talking to the CISOs in companies. AI's been around for some time now. 2023 was really where it started to really accelerate. When we bought Recorded Future in 2024, that was already with a perspective on we gotta look at broader threat vectors. Because companies, our customers in the payment space, you know, for them it's very hard to defend. You cannot really outspend against all threat vectors.
We needed to have reliable information that we could give them that says, "Well, here's where your biggest risk is. This is where you really need to invest." That's what Recorded Future has brought to us. You can imagine, right now this is a such a differentiated activity for us. Now, in a world of geopolitical tensions and so forth, you can also see that, you know, a lot of governments are focused on this space. Asymmetrical warfare, state actors, all of that is going on, and Recorded Future puts Mastercard in a very unique position to be a trusted partner to provide those kind of insights. When I look at the customer set of Recorded Future, it includes the intelligence community, government entities, as well as private sector companies and so forth.
This has just been the, you know, perfect acquisition at the right time. You know, when we brought together our data set on the Mastercard side with Recorded Future and Mastercard's Threat Intelligence, that's a real synergy because then you have even more powerful data. How is it going? We, you know, closed in December 2024. We all got running last year, and there's significant demand, so that continues. We put out a bunch of products, you know, I mentioned Mastercard Threat Intelligence earlier, but there's others, Malware Intelligence, Autonomous Threat Operations, et cetera. It is just the right thing at the right time, and we do expect that security solutions is gonna be a continued significant growth driver for us. You know. Yes, exactly that.
All right. All right. Thanks guys.
Our next question comes from Andrew Schmidt from KeyBanc.
Hi, Michael. Hi, Sachin. Thanks for taking the question. I appreciate the comments, Michael, on the being selective with deals. But if you just comment on whether the competitive intensity for deals has changed at all or whether that's relatively stable. Then Sachin, if you have any comments around how we should think about rebates and incentives trending this year or in subsequent years, that'd be great. Thanks so much.
Right. You know, selective is maybe a great word. Also we wanna win deals. That's our mindset. That is fueling transactions, that's helping us getting after the secular opportunity, drive our VASS, the virtual cycle. That is the mindset to start with. That has been the mindset for years. When it comes to competitive intensity around that because others might have the same mindset, I think that hasn't dramatically changed. I think our ability to provide value, that is, has dramatically changed.
If you look at our services portfolio today and, you know, the kind of bells and whistles that we put on a Mastercard payment, that is a lot of value that we can bring, and that we can have, you know, considered as we you know, engage customers on what kind of value exchange works for these deals. That's why we continue to win. Nothing dramatic I see on that front. Just being leaned, you know, leaning in. You know, you'd say it's not every market where you would say, If I have a relevant market share and I'm well positioned in the market, then I might have a different consideration as if this is a new geography and I really wanna grow my business.
You know, we also make these, kind of judgments as we grow our, you know, global presence.
Yeah. Just, you know, picking up on Michael's comments. Look, I mean, at the end of the day, we have a rich pipeline. Our teams are super active in terms of, you know, winning the right kinds of deals, and we will continue to stay focused on that. You know, the impact obviously will come through in terms of what you see on rebates and incentives. Again, we look at rebate and incentives, but we also look at overall net revenue yield for the company, and you can see the net revenue yield for the company is increasing.
More specifically on your question on rebate and incentives, what I'll share with you is in the second quarter, we expect for rebates and incentives as a percentage of our payment network assessments to be slightly lower sequentially as compared to the first quarter.
Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Matthew O'Neill from Bank of America. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Yeah. Thanks so much for taking my questions. Just curious, if you take a step back, from a high level, how does Mastercard think about, you know, a stablecoin transaction versus a local, you know, currency transaction, you know, from an economic contribution standpoint? In a future with a lot more stablecoin utilization, is Mastercard, you know, kind of economically agnostic? Are there opportunities for accretion or the opposite? Thanks so much.
Right. Let me start on that. Generally when you see where is our most of the volumes today, there's a lot of on and off ramp opportunities. We have these co-brand programs, and in that you basically have card economics. That's just a straightforward. Now in this space going forward, where we drive interoperability layers and so forth, as you can see, to start to build out a whole set of new services and additional opportunities. We see the space driving more value for us going forward. For now it is, it's that volume that is the most pressing need. How do I get onto in stablecoins?
I have an off ramp at the other end of the transaction, we gotta be at all those spaces and invest to do that. That's how I see it. Overall, I think it is a significant, you know, net new growth opportunity for us is, which is why we felt we are gonna deepen our capabilities through the acquisition. We wanna drive all of that value and be a central network that facilitates that, you know, value exchange over those digital assets.
The economics on the acquisition, right? Once it's complete. I mean, think about the value proposition coming through there, which is Michael talked about send. You know, basically it was about convert, send, receive, and store, right? There are these different attributes which come with the acquisition. The revenue model on that is basis points on volume. You were asking as to how you generate revenue, and that's kind of the mechanism. That's all an addressable market which we don't participate in today. That's the accretive part of what Michael was alluding to.
Thanks so much. Very much in line with my understanding, but I think important that it keeps getting mentioned. I'll jump back in the queue.
Our next question-
That's great.
-is from Bryan Bergin, from TD Cowen. Please go ahead, your line's open.
Hey, guys. Good morning. Thank you. May I ask on yields, can you just dig in on the key drivers and the TPA spread uptick and any important considerations on pricing changes as you move through the balance of the year?
Look, I mean, again, I, you know, from a pricing standpoint, a lot of what we do is again, predicated on the value we deliver in the market. Here's what I would tell you from a pricing standpoint. You know, all of our planned pricing is already contemplated in the guidance that I've shared with you. You know, I've kind of given you a little bit of color as to what the cadence by quarter looks like as well, without giving you specific numbers for Q3 and Q4. The reality is all of that already contemplates what kind of value we plan to deliver and for which we plan to actually have pricing. That's all I'll share.
Maybe one last question.
Our last question comes from Jason Kupferberg from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Good morning, guys. Thanks. Michael, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned how much growth we've seen in acceptance points in recent years, and I think some of that will continue to come from geographic penetration, but can we get an update on how you guys are thinking about the most fertile new categories of acceptance over the coming years, just as you continue to grow the network? Sachin, just can you clarify on the VASS growth, currency neutral that you were actually steady on an organic basis year-over-year? Because I think you lapped Recorded Future. Thanks.
Right. Acceptance, you saw the growth, so that is very significant, and it follows a very clear plan. We are looking at going after domestic schemes, we're going after closed loop, we're going after under-penetrated verticals. Those are all aspects on how we're defining new volume and creating new acceptance. This is not limited to the consumer side. This is also happening in the B2B side. One of the things I should say is under-penetrated verticals, very interesting. Insurance, housing, our programs with Bilt, just finding, you know, making sure that it's understood that cards can solve you know, needs that are out there, in spaces that we haven't historically been in. VCN is another such example, so driving VCN acceptance, which we continue to do.
Under-penetrated verticals, I think is a significant opportunity for us. It's the bread and butter business of just driving acceptance every day. Small business, for example.
Jason, on your question on VAS growth. In Q1, we had approximately 18% growth in our VAS revenues. That has no impact from acquisitions. In other words, there's no incremental impact coming through. If you're looking at it sequentially compared to Q4, in Q4 of last year, we had about 22% VAS growth. That had about 3 points of an acquisition impact in there.
Thank you.
Thank you. Any closing comments, Michael?
Brings us to the end of the call. We overran a bit today, but there was a lot to cover. We appreciate your questions, and your interest and your support. All of this work that we just discussed today is only possible because of the work of our teams around the world. The first quarter gave us some pause to really worry about the safety of our people in the Middle East, in Israel and the GCC. And, you know, that is hopefully coming to a conclusion soon. It is that work that is so critical. Thank you very much, and we'll speak to you in a quarter.
Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.