Hello and welcome to our special coverage here from Davos 2026. I'm Shireen Bhan. We've been bringing you global news makers, headliners, business leaders to talk us through what 2026 looks like, what will be the trends that will shape the global economy, what will shape India's growth as well. Joining us now is someone who has a pulse check on global growth as well as a very keen eye on India, Michael Miebach, the global CEO of Mastercard here with us in our Davos studios. Michael, always a pleasure. Thanks so much for joining us here in Davos.
Good morning, Shireen. Thank you for having me on a very chilly morning.
On a very chilly morning indeed. But what about the investment climate and the investment temperature, Michael? Is it as chilly or is it heating up?
Hey, you know, the investment climate is a lot less chilly. So we see a lot of investments across the digital economy from leveraging AI for better experiences, powering the digital economy. We see a lot of investment around cyber security in the space. So I think AI lowering the barriers to bring better experiences to people is just taking hold and we're at the beginning of a whole new dawn around the digital economy. So excited, very excited.
I'll talk about the excitement on the digital economy in just a second, but let's talk about the real economy. And let me start by asking you about the trends that you're seeing in the US specifically. You know, the tariffs have had an impact. Of course, not as severe as was expected, but what is the retail consumer telling you? What is the data telling you at this point in time?
You know, when you take a look back at 2025, we're in a unique position as Mastercard. There's a lot of data. We have a good pulse on the overall economy and particularly on the consumer. So you think with tariffs and people adjusting and companies adjusting, the overall economy adjusting, you should have felt more of an impact but it was a pretty strong year, 3.2% on the GDP side overall for the globe and the US fared very well in that. And you ask the question, yeah, why is that so? Why is it adjusting? So first of all, we have seen a lot of the learnings from COVID, supply chains are a lot more resilient and there was a lot more focus on localizing supply chains and that has helped in this instance. The private sector is very good at adjusting when they know what's happening. So in the initial, you know, first half of the year that wasn't so clear but it was pretty clear what the private sector had to do in the second half of the year. And the consumer adjusted as well. So, if you're uncertain as the consumer, but you happen to be in the digital economy, you have a lot of tools that allow you to find out what's the best deal for me. If I don't quite know where prices are going, but I'm going to shop around. I can see what is my loyalty program offering me. Where do I get the best deal? I might have my preferences out there. I get better advertising. All these things come together. The consumer adjusted. Consumers were also shopping early in the holiday season this year. They said okay, I need more time to find out what I'm going to spend money on. So they have been very prudent, very savvy and very intentional and we don't see that changing in 2026. So the outlook is very positive, or considerably positive let's put it that way. So we feel it's going to be a year of continued expansion. You also saw that generally there was trade alignment happening. You saw when I think about where global trade flows go between Asia and the US there was a little less in the second half of the year particularly with China so that just kind of balanced out in a way but it all has settled. And some of the more secular trends is continuous investment in AI and in technology that is propping up the overall economy and you do see this continues strong household balance sheet. So all that together is a pretty positive outlook for this.
So the outlook continues to be positive. But you know, you talked about cross-border volumes and that is a high margin business for you. On account of this geo-economic confrontation and geopolitical risk and uncertainty, how much of a concern do you have on that side of the business?
So when we look at cross-border spending that's going on, you see cross-border spending in terms of travel, 2025 is a strong year on travel and we don't see that changing, just look at how full it is here in Davos. So people continue to travel despite headlines. And that's a fact. When you think about non-travel related cross-border spend, after COVID, non-travel related e-commerce really picked up and those preferences have never changed. So this is a very strong business for us and for other players in the ecosystem. So people look around the world and see in the digital economy the world is my oyster. I want to buy this and it just happens to be available elsewhere and consumers do that today. So we don't see that changing.
You don't see that changing either. Let's talk a little bit about what's happening in terms of payment trends, stable coins and that's something that Mastercard has also moved to and integrated into your system. What should we expect? What will be the trends that will shape 2026?
Yeah, if you look at the headlines from a trend perspective, so stable coins, digital assets is certainly one of them. The whole space of agentic commerce is another one. And then more fundamentally cutting across both of them is generally the need to secure the digital economy. So those are three big trends that are at play. You know, just spend a little bit of time on each of them. Stable coins, very interesting from our perspective. So here's a technology that facilitates quick and easy payments, programmable payments between businesses and between people. So as a payment powerhouse and the operating system of the digital economy as I like to describe ourselves, of course we have to offer that. It's built in our network, our network is ready to settle in stable coins everywhere around the world and we see demand rising. Think about it in the context for example of cross-border payments. So those are today often times payments that have to be pre-funded, with stable coins it's instant settlement. You don't have to do that any longer from a capital perspective, it's a lot more efficient. For consumers or businesses it's most likely going to be a little bit cheaper because the money arrives faster. So a lot of advantages there in that use case and many other use cases out there. We're excited about digital assets from that perspective. Agentic. So the world of agentic AI in the world of payments manifests itself for example from a user experience. If you decide you're going to go on your favorite chatbot and you ask your chatbot, I have to do this trip and I'm needing the following things and it gives you a list of 10 items that you need for this, let's call it camping trip. In today's world, you might go on your favorite search engine and then hit different websites to buy what has been recommended to you. In the world of agentic commerce, you could just check out on your chatbot. And how do you do that in the world of payments? The chatbot needs to be registered. Is it a real chatbot? Is it verified? What happens if something goes wrong? So all the things you take for granted when you pay with Mastercard today. So we have built that into the agentic commerce experience and that is bound to take off because consumers like this kind of experience.
How large is it today for you, agentic?
