Mastercard CEO: We are here for the journey

In order to have a constructive dialogue, the fourth dimension really is you have to be clear that you are a long-term partner who's going to share something with you if they feel you're here for the moment and not for the journey. We are here for the journey.

We joined the bilateral conversations, and I think the idea was really based on the ground of there are strong business relationships, and that's always a bridge between countries because commercial entities working with other commercial entities, people with people, that is a solid foundation of relationships between countries. It's a good dialogue where each of the leaders, the business leaders, had an opportunity to talk a little bit about their experience. All of them long-standing friends of China, which came across in each of these contributions, and saying where they see the future going. And it was general commitment there's so much opportunity ahead. So very good dialogue where President Xi responded to quite a number of these interventions. I think you clearly see the vision of high-level opening up really coming through in the reality of all of these businesses wanting to invest, and he reflected that back.

Right. You just zoom out a little bit and say what are we actually seeing? So through the lens of our industry, we see a super dynamic payments market. So the payment ecosystem here offers more choice than many other places around the world. Take it from the Chinese digital apps to now Apple Pay is coming. Every choice in the world is really there for consumers. But I'm always intrigued by the focus on making everyday life better for the people here. So it's not just for the sake of technology, really solving problems in tier three cities and rural areas for small businesses, all of that. So headline, what I see is beyond the words is a super dynamic payment ecosystem for a large payment technology player like ours. We love that and we want to be engaged, and that is what we're doing. I think it's also really interesting to see with the ups and downs of the global economy how resilient China's growth has been. So since we support economic growth and commerce, it's good for us if the economy is going the right direction. We have seen that here in China. One stat that I actually shared in one of the meetings yesterday with Premier Li was how inbound tourism, which is one of the priorities of the Chinese government, has really soared. 17% increase in tourism, 40% increase in spend of these tourists coming to China. Now, they don't come from a world of digital apps or maybe local digital apps, but not Chinese digital apps. So one thing that we're doing is connecting them to everyday life. One thing that's been fundamentally true the whole time is the willingness to collaborate and partner. So we engage with regulators here, with lawmakers, with our business partners, with our customers, and we truly feel welcome to the point about opening up.

Right. So as you rightly said, it's been two years. In fact, last week marks the two-year anniversary of us having a domestic card clearing license here. But you know, when I talk to our customers and partners here, they are excited about it. So that's a big part of what happened over these two years is now we can have a conversation and say I can put a product in your customer's hands. Let's say you're my banking partner here, and say let's put a product in your customer's hands that can be used domestically in China anywhere, but also abroad. Today, it's been by or before our license was bifurcated largely that you either have a card that does something over here and have a local solution. So now you have ultimate choice, ultimate convenience, and safety, security, predictable experience everywhere you go. If you're a person that travels a lot or a business person, for example, that's on business trips, it really matters. So it's a pretty unique proposition, and that resonated from day one. But that was the theory. So we had to build the technology. We've done it. We used local talent, local technology, so you know everything is seamless with the existing ecosystem, and the excitement is there.