Specialist
Executive at Intrepid Ventures
Agenda
- Defensiveness of Visa (NYSE: V) and Mastercard’s (NYSE: MA) networks in an increasingly electronic payment market, with potential longer-term threats from PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) and Alipay
- Visa and Mastercard’s prospects in China and APAC given UnionPay’s existing positioning and digital wallet adoption
- Competitive dynamics of Visa vs Mastercard in Europe with Visa Europe now integrated
- Strategies of other semi-global electronic retail-payment networks including American Express (NYSE: AXP), Discover (NYSE: DFS), WeChat Pay, JCB and others
Questions
1.
What key trends or drivers should we track across the global payment network operating environment?
2.
What is your outlook for interchange fees more broadly? How should we gauge the risk of interchange caps or pressures in the US, given what has occurred internationally?
3.
You earlier referenced the pandemic accelerating the secular shift to digital payments. How should we evaluate the longer-term defensibility of Visa’s or Mastercard’s network in an increasingly digital environment? Which players are most likely to threaten their current positioning and why?
4.
Which of these players do you think is best positioned to make headway, and when would you expect Visa or Mastercard to feel that impact?
5.
Can you update us on the European Payments Initiative and its likely impact on these companies?
6.
How do you think competitive dynamics will evolve between Visa and Mastercard in Europe, given Visa Europe has now been integrated? Could Visa claw back some of the market share in Europe?
7.
How can we track whether Visa and Mastercard are taking share in some of these European regions?
8.
How would you grade the likelihood of Visa or Mastercard gaining share in China or APAC more broadly? You referenced the dynamics with China UnionPay as the government-sponsored monopoly of sorts, and there are other dynamics such as existing digital wallet adoption to consider.
9.
How would you grade Visa’s and Mastercard’s growth prospects in LATAM, given some of the recent Mastercard market share wins and Visa becoming more aggressive?
10.
To what extent could the emergence of instant or real-time payments pose a threat to the Visa or Mastercard networks? This could be pay-by-bank at point of sale as an alternative to existing card rails.
11.
How should we assess the push of these payments into the open banking ecosystem? Visa agreed to acquire Plaid in January, Mastercard agreed to acquire Finicity in June. How might this execution play out?
12.
What is your near-term and 10-year outlook on Visa, Mastercard and the other payment networks?
