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Earlier today, we shared Mastercard’s financial results for the second quarter. We are pleased to report that momentum from our strong start to the year continued through June. Net revenue grew 18 percent on a currency-neutral basis, while volumes continued to be solid – up double-digits in most markets –and cross-border volume increased 19 percent. 

If you listened to our conference call, you heard how we continue to deliver on the top line, while being judicious and mindful in how we manage expenses and investments. Our teams are staying focused on building out product and solution capabilities that will support our customers around the world and provide the best user experience. Some of those highlights and themes include:

  • Strengthening Relationships – Across many markets, customers are noting the value they see in a differentiated set of solutions that help grow their business. We’re leveraging the best from across our core products and data and analytic capabilities to deliver wins like an expanded PayPal relationship with the new Venmo debit card, flipping consumer credit and debit business with Credit Agricola in Portugal, the L.L. Bean co-brand, and a growing relationship with Standard Chartered in Asia.
  • Powering All Payments – We continue to provide choice to consumers, corporates, merchants and issuing partners, both with our core card rails and in driving account-based payments. In the past few weeks, we noted how we are bringing our Mastercard and Vocalink assets together to offer one, convenient, end-to-end solution in the UK. Mastercard Send will be connected to Faster Payments to enable a variety of P2P and B2C payments. And, as Worldpay makes our Pay by Bank app available to its merchant customers in 2019, they will benefit from the increased convenience and security.
  • Commercial – If you have joined us at various events and investor conferences, you have heard us talk about the $120 trillion commercial opportunity. We continue to execute on the strategy, build out new products and scale existing solutions. Customers like JPMorgan have renewed their commercial agreements due to the value they see in solutions like In Control and SmartData.
  • Digital Beyond the Card – We continue our march to a more secure and simpler online checkout process, as well as expanding our support of fintechs and challenger banks across Europe like N26. Our Accelerate initiative adds to the resources, options and choices we provide these businesses to help meet their customers’ needs – value, features, services and rewards.

While we are monitoring certain macroeconomic factors, global trends are generally positive at this point in time. Our currency-neutral expectations that we had laid out for investors have not changed and look to year-over-year revenue growth in the high-teens. As I have noted in prior blogs, we’ll use the momentum of this quarter to continue to pursue long-term growth with the right kind of investments.