Mastercard outlined ambitious growth targets for its payments business at a presentation for investors and Wall Street analysts on Wednesday.
Mastercard expects its core card business to grow annually at about 9% during the next few years. It estimates the card market at a size of about $45 trillion while the total addressable market for payment flows is more than five times the size, roughly $255 trillion, the company said.
The payments giant is targeting disbursements and remittances, business-to-business accounts payable and consumer bill payments, which the company expects to grow at double-digit percentage rates.
According to the company, Mastercard can address $80 trillion of the potential market with offered or under development services.
"We're thoughtfully, systematically, and pragmatically going after these new payment flows with a four-step approach, establishing reach across relevant rails and accounts and simplifying access through a single connection to Mastercard," Chief Product Officer Craig Vosburg said during the event.
For instance, disbursements and remittances represent a $32 trillion opportunity for the company's Mastercard remittance and cross-border services, which reach more than 90 percent of the world's population. The company is also expanding into health care, gambling, business-to-business and crypto wallet "cash outs."
"In addition, many of these disbursements utilize Mastercard cards as endpoints, so we also benefit from incremental spending, debit and through our market-leading position in prepaid, Vosburg said. "We believe this opportunity is still in its early stages and has ample room for ongoing growth through expanding geographic reach into new markets, addressing additional use cases and continuing to add new distribution partners."
Mastercard also is eager to expand its foothold in the cryptocurrency market, said Mastercard Chief Digital Officer Jorn Lambert.
The company is building a stack of services to support market participants and has started to adapt its core network to cryptocurrencies. In July, Mastercard announced a pilot program to convert crypto from outside the company's network to fiat currencies inside the network.
"This allows crypto wallets and banks to stay crypto native while making it much easier for consumers, merchants and marketplaces to buy and sell cryptocurrencies and NFT (non-fungible tokens) collectibles," Lambert said.
"The demand for the service exceeded our expectations, and daily transaction volumes are twice our projections," Lambert said. "Building on these early successes, we're opening this up to new partners."
Mastercard's buy now-pay later service, called Mastercard Installments, is currently being rolled out. The company announced Wednesday that American Airlines, Fiserv, and Global Payments' TSYS unit will participate in the offering, which will enable millions of merchants worldwide to offer BNPL to their customers.
Mastercard will benefit from the initial transaction if the consumer decides to repay the loan with their Mastercard debit card.
