Earnings Review: Behind the Numbers

Earlier today, we reported our Q2 financial results. We’ve continued to demonstrate strong growth as we deliver against our strategy and invest toward our long-term growth objectives. In the quarter, revenue was up 15 percent and EPS increased 17 percent versus a year ago, both on a non-GAAP, currency-neutral basis.

But, it’s not just about the numbers. Strong words for a finance guy, I realize.

Behind the numbers, we continue to see the impact that Mastercard technology is making around the world, from transforming payments at transit turnstiles to making payments safer online. Our team is thinking big, developing products and services beyond the card and establishing Mastercard as the partner of choice in the marketplace. This is helping us to deliver every day and position Mastercard for further growth.

During our call with the financial community, we shared a few highlights that reinforce this momentum:

• It starts with a focus on our core business, where we are driving growth across our credit, debit, prepaid and commercial products. We established and deepened relationships with National Commercial Bank, the largest bank in Saudi Arabia, Despegar, a leading online travel agency in Latin America, DZ Bank, the second largest retail banking group in Germany and Nationwide in the UK.

• Our focus on continuing to continue to diversify our business can be seen as we expand across new geographies and customers. In India, we have launched an exclusive credit co-brand program with Flipkart, the country’s largest online retailer, while also signing a new agreement with Paytm Payments Bank that covers both their issuing and acquiring businesses. Paytm will also use our Send capability to enable credit card bill payments.On the B2B front, we announced a new partnership with OpenText, where we will integrate Mastercard Track with their supplier portal to increase speed, compliance and security for business information, payments and financing in the automotive supply chain.

• We continue to build new areas of our business, developing and acquiring additional capabilities that enable us to be an even better, more versatile partner, regardless of the type of payment. In the quarter, we announced a partnership with P27 Nordic Payments Platform that will use our Vocalink technology to provide a leading-edge real-time, multicurrency payment platform across the region.In addition, with the closing of our Transfast acquisition, we will be able to help consumers, businesses, governments and merchants make and receive cross-border payments with greater transparency and certainty. Transfast provides us with a powerful global network, reaching 90 percent of the world’s population.

We look forward to sharing even more on these points, as well as our long-term strategy, in the quarters to come.