Good morning. My name is Tasha, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Mastercard Q1 2019 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session [Operator instructions]. Thank you. I’d now like to turn the call over to your host, Warren Kneeshaw, Head of Investor Relations, Please go ahead.

Thank you, Tasha. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2019 earnings call. With me today are Ajay Banga, our President and Chief Executive Officer and Sachin Mehra, our Chief Financial Officer. Following comments from Ajay and Sachin, the operator will announce your opportunity to get into the queue for the Q&A session. It is only then that the queue will open for questions. You can access our earnings release, supplemental performance data and the slide deck that accompany this call in the Investor Relations section of our Web site, mastercard.com. Additionally, the release was furnished with the SEC earlier this morning. Our comments today regarding our financial results will be on a currency-neutral basis and exclude special items unless otherwise noted. But the release and the slide deck include reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to their GAAP equivalents. Please note that the growth rates we provide for switched volume, switched transactions and cross ordered volume have been adjusted to normalize for the effects of different switching days between periods. These adjustments have been made in current and prior quarters. This information is being provided so that you can better understand the underlying growth rates of these operating metrics. Our comments on the call today will be on the basis of these adjusted growth rates. We do not normalize GDP growth rates. Finally, as set forth in more detail in our earnings release, I would like to remind everyone that today's call will include forward-looking statements regarding Mastercard's future performance. Actual performance could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Information about the factors that could affect future performance, are summarized at the end of our earnings release and in our recent SEC filings. A replay of this call will be posted on our website for 30 days. With that, I will now turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Ajay Banga.

Thank you, Warren and good morning everybody. We’re off to a solid start this year; revenues up 13%, EPS up 24% versus the year-ago, as Warren said, on a currency neutral basis, and excluding special items. I think these results reflect our strong operation focus and our continued growth across each of our regions. And at the same time, we are continuing to invest in the business for the long term as you probably noticed with some of our recent product and acquisition related announcements. Let me start with the macroeconomic environment as usual. You may recall that last quarter we said that we expected solid overall growth to continue in 2019 with some moderation, and our view has not changed from that. That said, we're still monitoring a number of items as long going trade negotiations and other economic and political factors that could affect growth over the medium to longer term. U.S. economic growth remains strong. Low unemployment, healthy consumer confidence, retail sales grew 3.5% versus a year ago ex-auto, ex-gas according to our spending cost estimates. And that reflects some moderation as expected, as well as some impact from the shift in the timing of Easter this year. Now in Europe, we continue to see moderate growth. Consumer confidence remains mixed with declines in places like the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands. But despite the uncertainty surrounding Brexit, UK retail spending remains healthy again according to what we see in SpendingPulse. Asia Pacific has been impacted by trade policy uncertainty. We continue to monitor the strength of the Chinese economy. But having said that, we've seen modest GDP growth in region overall and that's underpinned by favorable monetary policies and generally stable labor market conditions. In Latin America, the outlook is mixed with positive signs in Brazil…

Thanks Ajay, and good morning, everyone. First, I would like to say that I am very excited about the opportunity ahead. And I look forward to working with each of you and to meeting those of you I have not met yet. Turning to Page 3, we had a solid start to the year. There are a few highlights on a currency neutral basis and excluding special items related to certain tax and legal matters. Net revenue grew 13%, driven by solid momentum in our core and was slightly ahead of our expectations due to services growth. Operating income grew by 20% and net income was up 21%, reflecting our strong operating performance. EPS was a $1.78 up 24% year-over-year with share repurchases purchases contributing $0.04 per share. During the quarter, we repurchase $1.8 billion worth of stock and an additional $467 million through April 25, 2019. So now let's turn to Page 4, where you can see the operational metrics for the first quarter. Just as a reminder, as Warren said, we don't normalize GDP growth rates. Worldwide gross dollar volume or GDV growth was 12% on a local currency basis, down 2 ppt from last quarter, in part due to the impact of the differing number of processing days between periods, as well as some other factors such as the delay and the timing of Easter this year. This was much as expected. U.S. GDV grew 8%, down approximately 2 ppt from last quarter with credit and debit growth of 9% and 6% respectively. Outside of the U.S., volume growth was 13%, down 3 ppt from last quarter. Cross border volume grew at 13% on a local currency basis, in line with expectations and driven by double digit growth in several regions. This Q1 growth was down sequentially…

Thanks, Sachin. Tasha, we're ready for the question-and-answer session.

Thank you [Operator instructions]. And our first question comes from the line of Sanjay Sakhrani from KBW. Your line is open.

I guess I had a question on related to some of the stuff you talked about, which was TSB banks decision to stick with Visa after committing to you guys. Could you just talk about the observations there? Thanks.

TSB is staying with us on credit and it currently in Visa and Debit and the reason is very simple. As you know, they have had to focus their attention on their technology circumstances when they were doing their migration of their technology platform. And the bank is very focused on getting that done right. And they're looking after their customer and meeting them responsibilities on that front. In the midst of that to add the migration of a debit book would have added unnecessary risk as well as customer reputational issues to them. And therefore, they thought about is, hold on and we'll see later. And I think that's the right thing to do if I was in their place and I actually respect their decision.

Our next question comes from the line of Tien-Tsin Huang from JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Just maybe couple quick ones just on the modernizing payment systems in the Philippines and Peru, and et cetera. Just curious, once you're beyond the build period. What's the run opportunity for MasterCard? Do you become an intermediary or you're an advantage position to power these intermediaries? Just trying to understand what happens beyond the build phase? And then maybe for Sachin, just incentives line with some of these Fintech deals like Apple coming in and then TSB as Sanjay asked. Any considerations throughout the next two, three quarters?

So Sachin will answer that incentive and I’ll give you the answer later on the Philippines. Go ahead.

So on your question as it relates to incentives, our incentives continue to be very much in line with our expectations. We expect for deal activity to pick up in Q2. But other than that not much in the nature of changes as it relates to our expectations on incentives.

And Sachin on the ACH platforms. So what we're trying to do it depends on what kind of RSP and what kind of deal is constructed. Even that in the Philippines and Peru, the deal is a bit more complete in the form of having infrastructure operations also included in it. In others, it could be only the software as it is in Saudi, or in the Clearing House in the United States, or in Singapore. If it's only software then it becomes a different ability to intervene in the payment flow. So if it's only software, what we're trying to do is to build apps, which was off that software but also to build value added data analytics tools like the anti-money laundering tools so on, which we've built in other markets and so we can bring them to these countries that have software. Also, we provide skilled related thinking around charge backs, disputes, fraud management that kind of stuff. So that's a software idea. Whereas infrastructure, it's a little different. It'll be a little bit more like the UK in some ways where we actually run the basic infrastructure. And then we can build products and scheme rules on top of that as well. So these are two slightly divergent parts. And it depends on what each country wants for their local instant from past ACH payment system as these RFPs open up over the next two years. What I was trying to say today was that if this has been sometimes coming, because these RFP processes are slower than the usual but they get done. And this quarter there were two, there is others as well and there's more RFPs in the process that we're deeply in negotiation with.

Our next question comes from the line of David Togut from Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

What impact do you see from the two big mergers just recently announced, Fiserv and First Data and then FIS Worldpay, on MasterCard growth opportunities. And then as a related question, both companies or in both merger situations it called out growth opportunities in B2B. I'm curious how you can work with them in addressing B2B?

We've looked very closely of issue of processes in many markets and especially in the United States, which has a more fragmented payments ecosystem than a number of other markets. And I fully expect to continue to partner with these folks. We've talked to all of them, as you can imagine, including me personally. The M&A doesn't change where we've got teams working with them to determine how best to collaborate to make them win while also getting our work done. Remember they play a really important part in the ecosystem for banks and credit unions of all sizes. And mostly they have to distribute our products and services. And so I feel like there's lots of opportunity that both came, the consumer payment side but also in the B2B side, but it's just too early to cement any of them down. They're both very busy with their own transactions, as you can imagine. And they need to get that done well, because that's their first preference. And then we can really get deeply involved in what else we could do together with the merged entity. Meanwhile, the independent partnerships with separate entities continue, to be clear. The merged entities will have a whole new game and the mergers got to finish before you can do that.

Our next question comes from the line of Bob Napoli from William Blair. Your line is open.

MasterCard has been very active on the M&A front. And I was just hoping, Ajay, to get a little more clarity on additional potential areas that you're looking to build up through the M&A. And is there still a very healthy pipeline, maybe an update on the strategy, the M&A strategy and the pipeline?

I think Sachin's baptism by fire on this is the fact that in this first quarter, we delivered a couple of extra M&A deals to him, just to keep him happy and make him realize that he needs to do a little bit of work. It won't be an easy thing to follow in Martina's somewhat large shoes. So I hope she's not listening to that. But your question is a much deeper one, here's the deal. We have not changed our revenue strategy for the years that I've been talking about this. We're trying to use both organic and inorganic ways to grow in the spaces that we think give us possible growth areas to the next decade or two; hence safety and security; hence data analytics and information systems; hence digital identity systems; hence B2B and cross border payments. All of these AI, all of these are intertwined in the idea of building out new capabilities and new services, more or less pretty neatly placed in the third block of our strategy, which is in the grow, diversify, build. Most of these are in the build space. And that's how we've built these services organically and inorganically to now 26%, 27% of our revenue, that's the objective. At the same time, I'm also trying to build the capability to be available and present across all rails of payment, not just cards but also non-card rails. And hence the VocaLink acquisitions and the acquisition that are going on in B2B spaces to deliver usage results against those, so that's what's going on. Nothing's changed in that. You will find us active participants in these spaces in loyalty and rewards, and those spaces over the next few periods as well. We have a relatively active pipeline, and Sachin could tell you that his team has -- I don’t know, Sachin doing a year 20 to 30 such deals.

That'll be correct, 20 to 30 such deals we could be actively due diligence. The list of deals we would actually scope out would be much broader than that. And just to reiterate what Ajay said, it all starts with the strategy and then we figure out from thereon what's the best way to achieve the strategy between build, buy and partner, as with the M&A component is one big piece of that but not the only one.

Some of these deals -- actually a numbers of them M&A from us partnering with these people on a commercial deal for us, Transfast as an example of that recently. But this has been the case in the past as well with a number of the transactions we have done. We end up -- like Brighterion, we ended up being a constructive partner of theirs, having a commercial relationship and then it changes over time into the possibility of an acquisition. So we're trying to use a mix of these outside acquisitions, as well as minority stakes. As well as in the case of fintechs and start ups a series of early investments as the way of making the company have a layer of its business exposed to all that's new and exciting, which we don't believe we have a full always a 100% right to be the only ones thinking of new ideas. And so this is a good way to get external thinking, external quality of people, get external and maybe some product quality or some distribution strength that we may not have. So Ethoca, for example has both products software but also distribution through 4,000, 5,000 merchants and 4,000 issuers whom we're tied up with. Transfast has compliance capabilities, FX capabilities but also distribution in a number of countries and licenses to operate in a number of those countries. So different things come together in how we make the transaction, but the pipeline is robust. And if we can do one or two transactions a year out of the 20 or 30 we look at that will be a good year. It just happen that in this quarter a couple of extra ones came through.

Our next question comes from the line of Tom McCrohan from Mizuho. Your line is open.

Can you remind us how much of your cross border volume occurs in the first quarter? I think there’s some seasonality. Just want to confirm that. Thanks.

Tom, I just want to make sure I heard that question correctly. How much of our cross border volume?

Yes, occurs in the first quarter. I think you -- I think that’s one of the weaker quarters. Just want to confirm the seasonality.

Yes, from a seasonality standpoint what I'd tell you is it used to be typically a little bit more in the nature of volume on cross border, but for the most part in the remaining quarters it's pretty stable.

Our next question comes from the line of Ramsey El-Assal from Barclays. Your line is open.

I had a two part question on some regulatory items. First is on the secure customer authentication rules coming out later in Europe this year, whether you think that will be any type of -- constitute any type of pressure on European volumes later on in the year. And then second is a more broader question about data localization requirements and having to build out redundant processing capabilities in different national jurisdictions. Overtime whether that had also constitutes anything like a headwind to operating leverage, or any type of incremental pressure? If you can comment on those two things I'd appreciate it.

So the secure authentication rules, as you can imagine, we've been looking at the entire PSD2 implications for both us, merchants and banks in the system, as well as the new entrant PSDs and the ISDs entering into the European payment system. I actually think that secure customer authentication is an opportunity for a company like ours that has the capabilities, skills and toolset to provide this to all the players there, merchants will need it, banks will need it, these new PSCs and AISPs will need to connect properly into the system to ensure that the entire payments ecosystem is kept safe and secure. So for us I see this actually as an opportunity to deliver new value added services. And in past meetings, we've talked about how that’s one of the plans for what we're building out as part of our PSD2 strategy. I'm sure other networks are too. This is not about trying to be competitively advantaged. This is about trying to do the right thing for the payments ecosystem. The second part, the part of our data localization, that's an interesting question. It came up a couple of earnings calls before as well. And mostly that tend to do with India in that case. And I'd say around the world in some cases, data localization like in India has got real policy ramifications. In other countries that they engaged with us realized that data localization may not be to their benefit. And let me explain that for a second first. The challenge with data localization is actually not the expense, which is what your question comes from. It's not just the question putting up some more servers and storing the data on soil. And to be honest with you in an expense base of our type,…

Our next question comes from the line of Bryan Keane from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Just wanted to ask about the higher expenses expected in Q2. Sounds like most of that is going to be marketing spend, maybe some of that is from acquisitions. Just trying to understand maybe where the higher expenses are going, especially on the marketing side, anything in particular? And then secondly, just on the strong data so far through April 21st. Is there a way to think about how much of that is from Easter versus easier comps versus better economy, share gains, et cetera? Thanks.

Bryan, let me make sure I'm clarifying the Q2 comment out here, which is we're expecting double the growth rate relative to our fully year thoughts on OpEx in Q2. And that growth rate differential is being driven, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, by the fact that last year in our operating expenses we had the benefit of a very sizable FX hedging gain. So I think if you take that into consideration as you think about the marketing expenses or rather the operating expenses for Q2. In addition to that, we also expect we'll increase marketing spend in Q2. As I mentioned in Q1, our marketing expenses came in lower than expected. This is just part of what goes on. And as we run our business, we make evaluations as it relates to when's the optimal time for us to put marketing out in relation to various sponsorship assets and other initiatives, which we've got going on. And this is just part of course as part of that process, so nothing unusual that it would flag. On your second question on April 21 data, I will tell you look, I mean, April 21, data is impacted by the timing of Easter. And I think you need to take that into consideration just especially given the fact that there's 21 days worth of data, which we're presenting to you and three weeks are not going to make the quarter. So I will tell you that by enlarge the growth trends look solid as we've mentioned for Q1 and we continue to see that going forward as well. But timing of Easter plays a big part in terms of what we're seeing in our April 21 metrics.

Our next question comes from the line of Craig Moore from Autonomous Research. Your line is open.

Two questions. One, have you seen any uptick in local network competition anywhere around the world? And secondly the settlement with the European Commission that was seemingly announced yesterday on interregional cross-border, obviously, that will have an effect on the fee income of banks issuing cards that are being used in Europe. So thinking Citi for you guys. Do you -- can you foresee an impact on the rewards that those banks are offering on those cards cross-border business if you're going to see a significant reduction in net fee income? Thanks.

First, the second one. That settlement with the European Commission, as you know, we discussed it in the fourth quarter earnings call. I have Tim Murphy, my GC sitting here. He's dying to answer the question. But maybe you could -- was it in Q4, Tim?

Yes, so we briefed the investors in December of last year, and really no change following what we shared in December. It's just a process update. So that's you've seen since December, nothing new.

A big part about whether it impacts the rewards that different banks offer, not just Citi but this if for all banks that would have peoples travelling into European Union territory in fact anybody, Australians, and Chinese, and Americans and everybody else and perhaps -- soon. So the fact there is it's a relatively small proportion of the total interchange revenue that most of these banks generate. It's also a relatively small proportion of the total revenue, which comes out of not just interchange but revolving and other fees. And therefore, it is not my assessment that there will be that big an impact on their P&L. Now, remember that the reduced rates of 20 and 30 apply to physical card present, whereas for card not present e-commerce transactions, the rate for debit are a 115 basis points and the rate for credit is a 150 basis points. And so that's factored into the commentary I am giving you about the impact for banking institutions. It's not that it's not relevant, it is relevant. It’s just that it's not enough to, I think, change their marketing practices directly in this form. Your question about local networks I haven't seen an uptick or downtick in any relevant strong way over the last six months to a year. Local networks have been strong across the world in different forms over the years. I mean, the EU in every country in the EU has had a local network since well before, I mean, this is 20-25 years ago; Mexico's had them; Canada's had them; Brazil and Columbia and Argentina used to have them; China's had it since a long time; Korea's had them. There's not one example here. In fact, if you look at the number of our transactions that we actually pass through our own rails of the total, today it's 56% of our transactions. 10 years back when I joined, it was 40 something percent. So even 10 years ago, the majority of our transactions were being taken by local networks in some form for the actual processing of that transaction. We had other ways to raise revenue from the activity around that transaction. So the processing was going through local rails very often. Now, actually the number has reduced over the years as we’ve made inroads in a number of marketplaces.

Our next question comes from the line of Lisa Ellis with MoffettNathanson. Your line is open.

Couple from me, first Ajay, can you comment on China and specifically the news reports about potential joint venture announcement with Nets Union there? And then second one is related to the Vyze acquisition and around doing enabling extension of credit transactionly at the point of sale. Just from a vision perspective, can you comment as you look out building this out, this capability out with MasterCard over the next few years? What that's going to look like or how should we be thinking about it? Is it almost like another rail and what's MasterCard's role and differentiation exactly there? Thank you.

So China, I'm not going to comment on a newspaper article. I mean I wish I was asked for comments in the newspaper articles that give me blood pressure, but nobody does. This one doesn't really give me blood pressures. It's just what somebody who wrote there based on what they've picked up locally. We are -- this much I will tell you. I'm very committed to finding an appropriate and sensible way to enter the domestic Chinese market. And I'm making every effort possible across the company to get to the right place and getting the requisite licenses to be able to do that. And I think soon as we've got something substantial or real to tell you, we will, trust me. We just don't have anything real or substantial today, because this movie hasn't played out yet. So it will take some time to play out. And even after it plays out in terms of, let's say we do get some form of an approval, even after that there's a year-long process of national security clearances before you can actually start operating domestically on the ground in China. So this is like a couple of years away at least before we can give you something that's more interesting than just desires, that's the first. On Vyze, Vyze to me is interesting. I don't know yet know how well to answer for that question for you, because I don't yet know how big this could be. Installment lending to me is a really interesting aspect. Installment lending at the point of sale. Installment lending through a bank has been going on for a long time. But the idea of allowing the consumer as a point of sale to opt into an installment loan, in some ways it's been going…

Our next question comes from the line of Eric Wasserstrom from UBS. Your line is open.

I was wondering, maybe Sachin. Could you help remind us about all of the components that attribute to your strength in cross border? I think you have some portfolio wins that should be helping year-over-year or some Maestro conversions. Can you just remind us of all the factors that support that figure?

As a company, we're incredibly focused on cross border drivers. And as we said in previous earnings calls, MasterCard has setup the Center of Excellence within MasterCard where basically there's just tremendous focus on how we can do good knowledge sharing across the company on what can drive cross border volumes for this company. Really, it all starts with making sure that we have actually truly identified one of the right portfolios to go after from a cross-border standpoint. So as we sit back and we think about it, we leverage our services business with their data analytics capabilities to identify what are the right portfolios to go after. And those are the ones where there's a larger propensity of cross border. Thereafter, we go after Frank to optimize those portfolios in the best way possible. So to the extent we identify portfolios of our customers, which might be underperforming, we work with them through our consulting practice and our managed services practice in our advisors business, you try and actually drive more better and more optimized cross-border focus there. But even beyond that, it's about focusing on the right vertical. So for example, in the wholesale travel space, this is an area where MasterCard has been historically very much focused and has been actually leader, and that contributes to cross border. And then finally I would say on a similar basis. If you think about digital banks and things of that sort, these would be areas where we would focus. Again, going back to the theme of what are the right portfolios to go after and how do you optimize those. That's really what we're doing and it's sounds like basic blocking and tackling. But sometimes you actually really have to go down that path to actually make it come through and that's what we're doing.

I think I said last time that I'm sure that other networks do some of the stuff, so it's not rocket science. So it's in the execution and it's in getting it done. And yes the Maestro to MasterCard convergence to give us some tailwind, because clearly Maestro utilization and e-commerce is challenging. MasterCard debit allows a better utilization. And that will continue for a while, because you haven't completed those migrations in every location that we'd like to.

And if I can just follow-up, Ajay, any update on the B2B hub? I know that you launched it in Australia I think a quarter ago. And any update on its international or domestic advancement?

No, not really. In fact, we discussed it in the last quarter's call, you're right. Its physical launch is actually happening as we speak. And it's very early days. But that's the one we're focused on. The whole B2B space has opportunities. The hub is one way of getting to it. As you know the directory and track and enabling that directory to be fully built out the right way across the world is another one. Payments optimization engines are getting built into it. We're just doing a series of things. And hopefully, Transfast will enable and help us even more. Meanwhile, Sense continues to chug along, that's why I talked about Bank of Montreal and what it’s trying to do with Send. It's doing it for its commercial and business banking clients as well. So there's a series of tools that are being played in the B2B space.

Our next question comes from the line of Don Fandetti from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Ajay, so a two part question. I guess in the U.S., MasterCard's had a pretty good track record on these co-brand wins. But it's been a while since we've seen any major bank portfolio flip. Do you expect to see any market share change over the next year or two there? And then separately any update on the common pay button from e-commerce that the industry had some time to digest it? How are you guys feeling about the penetration opportunity?

So, on the first, on big bank portfolios. There've been some over the last year or two that we've talked about, and we've won on from parts of Capital One to parts of Bank of America and the like. And those are still helping us grow share. In fact, if you look at the way our credit numbers are growing in the U.S., part of that is co-brand, that's Cabela's and Kroger and the like, but part of it is also these bank portfolios that have been switching over to us. I don't see any huge swings in bank books moving around right now. But we're actively in every transition and every transaction that happens. But I don't see huge ones moving around as we speak as of now. On the SRC progress, we're looking as we said the industries have launched us in second half of 2019. It’s probably going to end up first in the U.S. and then get to additional markets over the next six to 18 months. And I think that you'll find that the feedback we're getting from issuers and merchants is very constructive to the EMVCo. We're trying to adapt through that feedback and get it rolled out, all the technology build and branding work is happening, as we speak. I still remain pretty optimistic about what SRC could do for the industry, and for the consumer, and for the merchant and the issuer, simpler connect to one connection for all brands, easier to manage for a consumer, trying to replicate the physical experience of one terminal to convert that to a physical -- to a digital experience of one button idea, that's what we're trying to get to.

Our next question comes from the line of Darrin Peller from Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

You had -- I think you had a 200 basis points tough compare in the quarter and the FX. It looks like you clearly outperformed this quarter, growing around 13% constant currency. So first just what drove the surprise to the outside versus what it -- I think you initially thought when you talked about your guidance from last quarter for the first quarter trends. And then do you think that the soft spot we saw in cross-border, whether it's fourth quarter or perhaps early first quarter was more of an anomaly at this point, you feel better about the trends you're seeing? Thanks guys.

So Darren, I'll take that question. So as it relates to the first quarter, like I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we've slightly exceeded what our expectations were as it relates to our performance from a revenue standpoint, driven by the strength in our services business. So we also saw, from an FX standpoint, slightly lower impact on FX in the first quarter relative to what we originally thought. So those were a couple of factors, which you might want to take into consideration as you're thinking about it. On your other question for cross-border, you’ve got to remember that cross-border last year in Q1 we had a 20% growth rate in cross-border. And those tough comps are a large part of what we're seeing in terms of the results in Q1 of this year. You remember when we talked about cross-border performance last year. We actually were fairly explicit about saying that we don't expect our normal run rates to be like what we saw in the first half of last year. So as you think about our business, we continue to believe that our cross-border is trending and performing as we would normally see it, actually performing. So I wouldn't make too much of swings between quarters, because you're always doing comparisons between year-over-year tough comps. Our business continues to go grow well. We like what we see in terms of our portfolio. Just a little bit more color if it's helpful from a cross-border standpoint. The U.S. outbound volumes continue to hold up pretty nicely. And our China business from a cross-border standpoint continues to grow also in the high single digits, much like we've seen historically. So all-in-all, business carries on as we have expected to be.

Thanks Sachin. Ajay, do you have any final comments?

Gentlemen, thank you all for your questions. And I'm going to wrap up with a few closing thoughts. First, we had solid start to the year, reflecting this strong operational focus and executional focus and continued growth across each of our regions. And we are executing against our strategy with a couple of potentially noteworthy milestones this quarter. The first one being the progress in expanding our real time payments capabilities in Asia, in Latin America and in the Middle East. And secondly, we announced these strategic acquisitions in partnerships we think will complement our existing products and services and position the company well for the next decade or two of growth as well. So with that, I'd like to thank you for your continued support for the company and for joining us today.

This concludes today’s conference. You may now disconnect.