Mastercard on Stablecoins and Agentic Commerce

[MUSIC] Welcome to the Bloomberg Intelligence Tech Disruptors podcast. I am Viksha Gera. I lead Fintech and Payments Research for BI. We are Bloomberg's research department with 500 analysts and strategists across all global major markets. I cover MasterCard and we are entering the era of agentic commerce and blockchain-based payments. Joining us today is the architect of this invisible revolution. Very pleased to have their chief product officer, Yorn Lambert, with us for this episode today. Welcome, Yorn. For over 50 years, MasterCard's empire was built on a simple physical act, the swipe or the tap. It was a world of plastic, signatures. Your physical presence was your identity. And then came e-commerce and we moved to the cloud where your identity was reduced to a 16 digit card number and a pin. But today the card is disappearing, the interface is vanishing and the person making the purchase, well, they might not be a person after all. So, Yorn, you have spent over two decades at MasterCard watching it evolve from a card network to a tech powerhouse. But lately that narrative has shifted from cards to multi-rails. By you becoming an intelligence switch of sorts and abstracting away the real, whether it's traditional credit, real-time ACH or a stablecoin, could you walk us through what's driven that shift to a multi-rail platform? First of all, Dicola, thank you for having me. It's a privilege to be here and indeed. It's a very exciting time in payments. Probably in any industry where technology is changing things around and that's very true in payments as well. But if you think about it for us, does it not like a pivot away from cards or pivot away from physical? What we have done over the last 60 years is connecting buyers and sellers with the best technology that exists in the market. And 60 years ago that was indeed physical, plastic and analog phone lines. And as new technologies come from analog to digital, internet, mobile broadband, NFC, cloud, and now obviously AI and blockchain, we're adopting these technologies. We are looking to make this experience more secure, more convenient, more seamless. And that's what we essentially, that's our mission. We're not tied to a specific technology, we're not tied to a specific form factor. But we are very tied to making sure that things are absolutely secure. And not about sending cats of pictures to people that is about people's livelihoods and making sure that it is as easy as transparent as secure as possible. So that is really the mission and that's kind of why we're evolving continuously and trying to do the best for our customers. That's a wonderful journey, John. So I mean, for decades, the click or the swipe was the ultimate signal of approval of commerce, right? But we're entering a post interface world now or so it seems. And the shift to agentic commerce is really not theoretical. I mean, I saw you earlier this year, you had moved from pilot to live deployment. So let's dive in a little bit deeper there. I want to talk about that Netscape moment, right? One of the reports that you published sized the market to be about $1.7 trillion by 2030. When you look at that pie, where is the early alpha? Like is this a primarily B to B play autonomous supply chains paying each other? Are we going to see a rapid consumer shift where C to B or consumer to businesses driven by personalized AI assistance? No, great question. And you know, in all humbleness, I would say that nobody really knows. But what we do believe in strongly is that this is truly a paradigm shift. It's not a hype. It's not something on the side. I think it's one of these moments whereby consumer payments pattern is being reset is being redesigned. And and over time, a very meaningful portion of commerce will move towards that new pattern. That doesn't mean that it happens overnight. I think it's really important to temper a little bit of expectations in payments. It is firstly a very wide ecosystem where with thousands of parties that need to actually move all in at the same time. And so it does take a little bit of time, but more importantly, you need to build. And in this case, rebuild consumer trust, not over nighting. People actually need to have confidence to throw their money at something that is very new when and very different. And there is there is the entire merchant catalogs that need to be actually reconfigured and made available in a different way that will take some time. And then business models will need to adopt as well. So so let's let's let's not expect that within two quarters, every commerce transaction will come to an to an agent transactions. And and actually in that sense, we actually believe that the net scape mobilization like well, it will start not with fully autonomous, agent payments, but what we call agent assisted payments whereby the consumer discovery, the search for the product will be through an agentic method. I want a pair of new running shoes in today's world or in yesterday's world, I would need to browse on to multiple websites, figuring out what type of shoes fit my running style, my running ambitions, my preferred color, what have you my location where I am at. And not tomorrow I can do it simply or today I can do a simple prompt and the agent will recommend within seconds, the right to for me. And that is where the big value comes from the consumer today. Well, agent, well, agent assisted commerce is that we will then make sure that a consumer can stay in that environment doesn't have to then swap out to a merchant environment that can stay in that agentic environment and complete the end to end transaction. I think it's actually not such a big leap. The bigger leap is when you autonomously give an instruction or dear agent, please buy me tickets for a Beyonce ticket in three months time whenever the tickets become available and I trust you to do that. That is a bigger leap for a consumer to make it so that will take probably a little bit of time, but agent assistant we think is is is is a frankly going to see adoption quite soon and as soon as kind of that merchant catalog piece is sorted and it will work. The moment you've gotten the technical pieces correct the moment that we build that trust and accountability by default and we get that reach which is really important. You can't really do a genetic if 5% of the merchant catalogs is available and a merchant will not do the work if there's only 5% of consumers who can take it so that reach is where we then come in and make this available. That's what I call the net scape moment right like when it becomes widely accessible to everyone what will it take for that to happen you said the merchant catalogs need to be converted. But on the consumer side like what other things are pending or what are the fiction points are remaining there. I would say that's the main one because we have now enabled all our issuers everywhere in the world to be able to carry a genetic tokens and therefore the piping that say is in place. We have announced the protocols around agent pay which puts all the security pieces in place and gives recourse to consumers and we can we can come back to that a little later. The long pull in the tent is actually everything that happens before payments which is the right catalogs that need to be put in front of the consumer with the right pricing with the purchase conditions with attacks with the shipping conditions and all that all that is to be served up in the right way in a very transparent way to the customer. That is now happening at quite a pace and you've probably seen some of the things that Google and others are doing. So I think that availability is here within quarters and then people will start adopting as they gain as they gain trust and they see the benefit. I do think your point around B2B is a good one. I think the same mechanism will be available to B2B and I think we might see businesses move relatively quickly as well once once they they see what it can do for them. So our expectation is we'll see adoption on both B2B payments and B2C payments in a quite meaningful way. But again, let's not get ahead. ahead of ourselves. There's no matter of quarters, this is a matter of years and we think for quite long time, agenteic payments will sit alongside, direct to merchant payments, marketplace type of payments, and obviously physical payments. Well, I remember my time for Cap to pay urine when we thought, "Oh, it'll take its time," and then it took some time, and it was just accelerating through, and here we are at point in time where Cap to pay is the norm. So we kind of, I know it'll take its own time to kind of start earlier adoption, but once the scale, it runs very quickly. It really peaked my interest when you were talking about the plumbing. You said you introduced agent pay to the layman, it sounds like a digital card, but as an analyst, it looks like a fundamental reengineering of the issuance acceptance framework. How does the agent pay model map onto your traditional issuer acceptance rails? Yeah, so great question, and interestingly it's both. It is building on what exists, but it is a really quite significant change in how it's all set up, because for the last 50 years, a transaction has been initiated either by the consumer, I buy my pair of shoes, or by the merchants, Netflix is pushing through a subscription payments. Two initiators, there's no third. That's how the whole system has been set up. That's how information is being shared, how liabilities are being calculated, how recourse is being designed, and now suddenly you have a third player, then there, an agent that happens to be a machine that gets in the middle of this, and we therefore need to rethink how information is being shared, what information needs to be shared, what things need to be verified, and how a recourse process, how a process when something goes wrong, is being resolved. And so we still use credentials, we still use tokens, we still use authentication, and these elements that exist in a normal consumer or merchant initiative payments, but the trust layer and the intent layer above is where the innovation lies, and where we've done a lot of thinking and work to make this work, and to actually share it and get consensus in the whole ecosystem on how to do that. And so to maybe just double click on that for a moment, what we need to do is to make sure that the first and fourth foremost that the agent, who comes up to play, is a legitimate agent. That is not some kind of malicious bots, and God knows there will be many malicious bots that will look to get a piece of the cake, but we need to make sure that we verify the agents, first task. Second task, we need to make sure that the consumer who is interacting with the agents is actually the right consumer, that Dixia is Dixia, and not somebody else impersonating Dixia. Third, we need to make sure that we record the intent of Dixia at the moment of that purchase, that there is a capturing of that intent, so that when something goes wrong for whatever reason, we can go back to that intent and actually match what happened against that intent, and then provide Dixia the record needed. And then fourth, the entire ecosystem of an issuing bank, a merchant, a merchant bank, and any intermediary in the meantime, understands what's going on. Understand, actually, this is an agentic transaction initially by that agent, my risk parameters need to be there for adopted, and liability for that transaction is being distributed. And that is really what that intuition is. The trust and intent layer on top of the, all the piping that we already have in place are there. So that's fascinating, right? The two things that really jumped out at me were, first of all, that you're not building a parallel set of rails. This is basically incrementally building onto all the elements that you were already kind of collating for the traditional rails. It's just adding an overlay on top of that. And then the second thing was when you say, so we are basically moving from point of sale to point of intent, and it looks like MasterCard's core value proposition in this scenario moves from being a payment processor to an identity and intent validator in a way, right? I think a great way to put it is it is it is truly an extension of the chain of trust that we have built to include a new party. And now the handshake that intent needs to include the agents and needs to be cryptographically verified in order to keep that integrity of the transaction. That seems a little bit like theoretical and to a consumer bizarre. I can tell you, Dictia, when the consumer buys these issues or when they buy this ticket of Beyonce, the first thing that they will think as they press the button, oh my god, I hope this is going to be fine. And I hope that if something goes wrong, I have a recourse. They don't need to know what all the mechanics are behind us. Just like today, they don't actually know what's going on. But it's our job to make sure that we have their backs and that we can protect them. This is why we actually believe that, you know, like some people who believe that the brands and will be obfuscated somewhere behind an agentic world. Oh my god, you're in you spoke my mind. It's that is exactly what I had. So someone asked me recently, would you go and spend and buy something like buy or whatever next dress or dresses probably is there maybe a coffee machine or whatever using agentic. And the first thought that I had was it's going to be like the moment it comes to money, you become uncomfortable, right? Like you don't want something randomly, some agent, randomly going and spending your hard earned money. But when a name like mastercard comes behind that transaction, it suddenly puts you at ease. So essentially what you just said that the brand or the trust is what is driving that right like that's the that's the essence of that transaction. But then instantly I wear my analyst shows and it comes to my mind like, how do you monetize that like how do you monetize that agentic hand shake? How do you monetize that trust that you're or the legitimacy that you're providing in that transaction again again great question. And of course, and we need to make sure that we not only provide great value, but then also get get something in return for that. And and to us it is, it is essentially that equation wherever we feel we provide trust or we provide value, let's say. And we believe that there is an opportunity to monetize in the in the agent pay model that I explained before. There is an opportunity because we are doing some work to verify the agent K YA like no you region. We are doing work to make sure that D share is D share. We are doing work to make sure that we are transferring that data throughout the entire ecosystem through our agentic tokens. And then possibly the most important piece we are putting in place a mechanism so that the consumer when something goes wrong hopefully that will never happen but you know inevitably you can't really foresee any circumstance that consumer has recourse and I will be able to then as a consumer who have bought the issues but get something wrong I will be able to actually go back and say no now I want to return the issues over when we get my money back and we as a brand as a company orchestrating this will have the consumers back and that we think has real value and is monetizable whether after that there are further opportunities on services on on on on on how data has been used you know we'll see how that evolves but we believe that that trust layer is indispensable to agenda and the good news is everybody that we speak to says the same thing and all the large agents all the merchants all the if yours see that actually this whole like castle could come crumbling down quite quickly if people find actually I got defrauded by malicious bought and I don't have a recourse. So it's really really important that we do this right and it's very encouraging that to see that the entire kind of industry is coalescing around that and and is building to write towards that same objective. So you know I want to double dial into this competitive mode that you just mentioned right like you spent the last few years aggressively building into the whole digital identity and trust space and in an agent equal obviously the identity itself is evolving right it's not just a face or a fingerprint it's a cryptographic proof of authority how does your footprint and digital ID give you that edge over competition. available in 210. countries and territories, we have 3.5 billion consumers there, we have over 150 million merchants there. And it is really critical that for any of these players out there, any agent that they have a day one brought reach and an availability otherwise is going to take years to build up a very effigmented ecosystem. So that to me is one important, let's say, I said that we have. And then to the point that we made earlier, people know that we have their backs, people know that they have recourse when they pay with MasterCards to that brand of trusts that is frankly a real trust deficit in a new space is a second important piece. But then I think the whole ecosystem needs three things. They need that clear user intent, they need authenticated credentials and they need a verifiable agent identity. There's not that many people who can for the industry make these three assertions say we will verify agents, we will authenticate consumers and embed this in the credentials and we will record user intent. I believe that in the position that we are that is a very significant mode. Again, that is real value that we can monetize. But we have to earn the right of everybody to play that wallet to monetize. And so that is really why we work very hard on this. We're taking a lot of input as we develop something like verifiable intent. You know, that is the result not just of some very smart engineers with a MasterCard, but of a lot of conversation with the local ecosystem partners. So we get it right and we do that while keeping privacy as it should be while keeping the openness of the ecosystem as it should be. Yeah, you're not mean the whole interoperability aspect of it. I don't even think we have enough time to cover that. Like it's just so many protocols kind of coming into it and we're also kind of trying to make a sense of who wins in this whole aspect. But I think it's very heartening to see all the new partnerships that we're seeing across the big tech companies, the agent owners, so to say, and yourselves as well. Yeah. We don't have a strong view about who wins or who doesn't win. We're working with all of them and the same principles and the same payment standards will be embedded in every one of them, whether it's Google's AP2 or whether it's MCP or ACP. We need to make sure that the same principles are adhered to everywhere. And that's actually a very productive discussion that's really not disputed. Now, you know, then who wins? I think we'll probably see alignment over time, but we're pretty relaxed about all that. So you've done this so long, right? Let me ask you this question. Do you think this is a moment where the winner will take it all or do you think that this iterations will keep happening and we'll have like many players kind of playing in that space? I think and I hope it's the latter. I think if anything is teaching us with, well, firstly, the big platforms are not necessarily the old winners, right? They have on Thropic coming out and nobody knew it. Thropic five years ago and then our huge player. Then you see things like OpenClaw that are really shifting around balance of power and the fragmentation. So my hope and expectation is it will not be a world of world gardens, but it will be much more open and competitive worlds. And again, the way we design our things is to be as open as possible to provide any more merchants from the large to the small to be able to interpret with any agents from the large and the small and truly make this inclusive. So just coming back to like the what is remaining to be filled up in this space, right? Like every disruption has a fiction point. You mentioned the unsolved problem right now is more around merchant catalogs. We did talk a little bit about the liability gap as well. So I mean, to put it very simply, like if an agent hallucinates or buys a wrong flight or overspends on a supply chain order, who's left holding the bags at like master cards? Are you building like a new dispute resolution layer specifically for AI errors or how is that going to work? Yeah, I again, great question. I think that is completely, I think I think that that is the very core of what agent-based needs to do is to make sure that there is a liability framework whereby every party in the chain knows what their responsibilities are and know what we course they have. It's specifically, obviously, the originator, the consumer in there. Just like today, we have that in the non-agentic world. We need to kind of recreate that. That is not about inventing a new dispute system again. It's about extending like a proven patterns and making sure that we bring that that that the unknown party, that machine into the equation. And so a lot of has to do with that that that point that I mentioned about intent and auditable transactions that that we can go back to you buying the dress or me buying the shoes and and seeing the chain if something goes wrong. That could be the agent that hallucinates, but that could be the merchant that chip the wrong thing or that could be the consumer that confused the intent with or confused the prompt with the intent which is not which is talking things. And so we will be, we'll have that auditable transaction, we will be able to serve this up to the consumer and we will be able to say, well, Diggia, this was the dress that you actually bought. So in open your mistake or we will be able to say, oh no, that's not the case and therefore you have records. That that is the heart of this. It's very hard to do. But like I said, the whole ecosystem, I think, is driving towards the same goal as pulling in the same direction. And agent pay or the verifiable intent, which is the piece of that of that recourse has gotten very strong endorsements. Kind of we kind of co-created that with the Google and others. And as you've probably seen in the press, it got very wide endorsement and is now being adopted with with high pace. Yeah, but I mean, with all the data and the behavior patterns that you've seen from customers globally across the 210 countries, I'm sure like that gives you a significant edge in terms of just analyzing patterns as well, right? I mean, it's really excited to see how and how this unfolds and try my hands at it as well. But let's move on to the second part of what I wanted to discuss a little bit more in depth with you. So if agentic commerce is the new front end of how we buy, stable coins are the new backend of how we settle in a way. And you obviously recently made the waves with the $1.8 billion acquisition of PVNK. And I mean, as an analyst, it looks like you're not flirting anymore with crypto. You're actually buying the plumbing. It's kind of a proposal in a way beyond, you know, just toying with the idea. What is the bull case for you on stable coins? Like, you clearly doubling down there. What is the bull case? Yeah, I think, well, so firstly, like the stable coins have been exist in existence since 2014. So now we're 11 years. And obviously, we've done little things flirting. I think you call it, we've worked with it for a little while. But I think the last year has seen a significant discontinuity and starting, of course, with regulation. You know, you have the Mika regulation in Europe. You have genius and maybe one day clarity in the US and other, you know, the UK is working hard on the stable coin, a potential, a rule set. And with regulation, you will see the financial industry coming to jump into the free as well. And indeed, you've seen quite a few financial industries there. We've always believed that without the financial industry, this will continue to be a peripheral thing in the crypto trading stuff. And therefore, we haven't really jumped full in until regulation is there. And now it's there. And we think, we think over time, pretty much every bank will be able to offer on chain digital currencies, be it stable coin or tokenize deposits. That's almost in our view an inevitability. An inevitability. You could be wrong, but that's our thesis. Secondly, we have already seen in 2025 about 350 billion in flows, which are non-crypto trading related, like two payment flows, mainly cross border remittances, disbursements, I will have you. So you're such a starting to pick up and people see the real benefit of that. But then also in the social features of ours, we expect in the next couple of years, a multiplicity of coins that need to operate on a multiplicity of chains that need to be converted to a multiplicity of currencies, distribute it. by a multiplicity of players. And that means an interoperability headache or from our perspective, an interoperability opportunity. That's what we do. Interoperability between a very wide set of bigger systems. And so we thought, OK, well, if regulation comes in, if usage is picking up and if fragmentation is exacerbating, this is the perfect time for us to get serious. And then we looked for an asset that can help us with that. BVNK is for a relatively recent company, one that has licensing in multiple geographies that has a deep technological prowess that has a high degree of maturity around compliance. And that has great talent. And so we felt that that was the right time and the right player for us to really move into this and hopefully help ordering and setting up that market for a healthy future. Well, the timing definitely worked out for us, you're and we had published our deep Taiwan's table coins just a couple of days before you announced the deal. And you're like, you know, that was just fantastic. Curious though, what were the considerations for not launching your own coin, you know? I know like this concept of how many stable coins can we have and interoperability, obviously, is a issue. But given the scale in size and the global presence that you have, did you think about like that option as well? Yeah, so we look at the value chain and you obviously think about should we have our own chain or should we have a master coin? Kind of like the ring of that, but that doesn't mean that you have to do that. We've definitely looked at different options. At this point, we don't think that this is necessarily where we can bring most value. I think again, we are an organizer, we are an interoperator and we're not necessarily an issuer of our financial instruments. That's what I mean, we will never do or we will never see the opportunity. But for now, that's not where I think we have, we can add most value. And again, this is the very, very early innings of what we believe will be very meaningful and business. So one should never close any doors or exclude anything. But the interoperability opportunities is for us between fiat and stable coins and between the on chain assets is where I think we can add most value. So in terms of incremental revenue opportunities, how does BBNK kind of unlock that for MasterCard? Yes, so they have four products, primitive, they call it four fundamental product solutions. One is sand, they call it sand, very simple. It's to move from fiat to send a stable coin into a recipient's address. And we receive, which is the opposite, to get from a stable coin into fiat. They have a store product, which is to actually spin up a wallet for somebody who wants to receive cryptocurrencies. And then a convert, which is any type of conversion between two different currencies or between two different currency formats, like from a US dollar to a USDC is a conversion, from a USDC to a ERC would be a conversion, and or from a USDC to a USDT is a conversion. And so these four use cases apply often together. So if I want to send you a money, I have euros, you want to receive USDC, well, that would include a receive, an convert, and potentially a store. And for every interaction, there is a monetization opportunity. And I think as you can imagine in a spaghetti environment, there's many clicks that need to come into play for money to move from one country to another in different currency and in this different currency formats. So let's tie that in. And all of these flows kind of make sense theoretically, right? But if you look at-- so you recently launched the MasterCard One Credential as well, which basically allows a user to flip between, say, a debit, credit, or a stablecoin balance on a single card, could be digital, could be physical. But that basically feels like the ultimate wallet, right? I'm curious about the play there. Like, is this a more Gen Z play for the West, where people are moving around USDC, USDT? Or do you see this as a-- this whole stablecoin balance is a tool for the underbank or unbanked emerging markets population, or even for people who cannot hold the dollar in their bank account for some reason? Where are you seeing the fastest adoption or the most kind of momentum in that space? Let me first explain a little bit how we think about this, right? For the longest time, we have been developing out products whereby the payment instruments and the store of funds are tied. So you have a debit card that means the store of funds as you bank account. Or you have a credit card that means the store of funds is an open to buy. Or you have a pre-paid card and you store of funds as a pre-paid balance. And if you have three funding sources, you have three products. In this day and age, that doesn't make sense. That used to make sense because everything was comportamentalized. But now you may have a debit, probably have a current account. You may have a line of credit. You may have a stablecoin wallet somewhere. And you may actually have a fee-up pre-paid balance. And you may have a bank account, or a bank account, or a bank account, or a bank account. And you may have a bank account, or a bank account, or a bank account. And you may have a bank account, or a bank account. Notice is that we don't see a real domestic consumer payments problem being solved with stablecoins. But that said, like one theme that kept coming up in our conversations is emerging markets, people wanting to hold the dollars. This is a capability that allows them to receive, to pay, and to hold a digital dollar. And given the fact that you are building that capability, do you see that that could be an emerging business model as well? Like does it kind of bring a little bit more of re-dollarization in that ecosystem, or how should we kind of think about that? Yeah, so first of all, yes. One use case is emerging markets, people want to store their savings somewhere, and they do that in a US dollar stablecoin. That's fair enough, but we don't think that that is a very meaningful use case. It's good if people go, but the dollarization of the world is probably not where you want to actually build a business on. And I think what we want to do is indeed making sure that the flow of funds becomes much easier, that you can move money from the US to the Philippines much faster, but ultimately we believe that the Filipino who will receive the funds will off-frame that in Filipino peso, and will buy their suppliers or buy their coffee in Filipino peso. So we don't actually believe necessarily that thesis of the whole world will move on chain and everything will be dollarized. And that's why we think that all and all framping is really important and facilitating. Now, I do believe that, well, you absolutely write that today, most of the use cases are about cross-border payments, remittances, disbursements, B2B. We don't necessarily think that there is no opportunity for domestic. It just hasn't quite emerged in any meaningful way, but think about polymarket. If you want to actually play a polymarket, you need a stablecoin. You need to actually own ramp on stablecoin because there's a blockchain infrastructure. That's a domestic on-ramp use case. Think about agent to agent payments. If indeed, God knows how that will emerge, but if indeed, agents will look to have access to it. to data from other agents and we will be going to pay for it. That might actually become a stablecoin use case because it is located with micro nano transactions at high velocity. Think about the benefits in capital markets as you actually pointed out in your study. It's almost inevitable that a portion of capital markets will move into tokenized assets because of 24/7 trading, because of liquidity benefits, because of atomic delivery versus payments. That will require on ramping from fiat into on chain assets at a huge scale and those will be to some extent domestic. So hard to put any predictions on that, hard to put any numbers on that. But we actually believe that the opportunity extends well beyond the disbursements or remittances or account-to-account use cases, which in itself is already a huge addressable market. That is amazing. Thanks for sharing that. I think that gives us a lot of food for thought around that space as well. Well, I mean, you pointed out to the point of convergence. You kind of read my mind. That was one of the questions I plan to ask you. Programmeable money for programmable agents. You're obviously being the charge on both agent-take and stablecoins. Do you see a significant lift in agent-take transactions, specifically because stablecoins allow for micropraimons and smart contract escrow? That traditional cards like Continental? Is that an area? Is that interlap or overlap sizeable enough or can grow enough, you think? Well, first of all, to be honest, yet, there is no agent-to-agent payment activity today. That doesn't mean that won't happen. I believe it will happen in some shape of form, very unclear as yet in what use cases and when and how. I would start by saying that doesn't mean that cards can't handle it. Within agent pay, we believe that, for example, the use case whereby two agents will interact, will aggregate the day's payments, might be microtransactions, but they will aggregate to a more meaningful transaction and then they will settle the more meaningful transactions of cardrails. That's actually already built in an agent pay and we believe that is actually a very appropriate way of doing agent-to-agent payments. Then even on the stablecoin side, it's very unlikely that this will emerge as every nano transaction will be settled or chain. That is just not a good use of world resources. What you will do is probably aggregate at a level two environment and then settle an aggregated amount on chain. There as well, of course, we're working on how best to architect that once again in a way that is open, that is not a world garden and that many people can participate. Very early days there, again, not so much because we haven't piped it yet, more because the actual business models have not emerged yet. We think that's a new addressable market for us. I mean, these things don't exist. If you have billions of microtransactions happening agent-to-agent, that's all new volume that we we believe we can go after. Again, that's why we're putting that energy against agent pay. That's why we're putting our energy against stablecoins so that we can help that market, will that market into existence? That was all very nice and expansionary right here. But I'd be remiss if I did not ask this and given the number of times I've been asked this question, I'm sure you have faced a multiple of that. Is there a bear case here? Stablecoins are significantly cheaper to move than traditional fiat across borders. Are you concerned that by the mainstreaming of stablecoins, you're kind of cannibalizing your own high margin effects and cross-border fees and like basically just in a single line, how do you defend the take rate in a stablecoin first world? Trust. I think it comes back to the same thing. If you send somebody money or if you buy something with a stablecoin in today's world, how on earth can you be confident that the counterparty is actually real? Is no-dessentient entity in a sanctioned country? How do you make sure that if something goes wrong, you have records. I would say stablecoins are famously final. That means if something went wrong is pretty final too. Stablecoins are supposed to be fast. Fast funds means fast fraud. So I actually believe that there is even more necessity to bring that trust and confidence in an area frankly that has a trust deficit. So if you built it right, I think we can construct it in a way that people feel comfortable and we think that is monetizable. But we need to vote to offer value. There's no question about that. ACH rails in itself, they're cheap too. But by building value on top of that, we can actually monetize this. This is always the same pattern. We're not inventing a brand new concept. We're just making sure that the existing concept applies to a new environment. Well, your past defenses have given me a lot of comfort with that argument. You're like, have been through cycles where people have asked me, like all of these developments, how are they going to disrupt you? And you've proven this time in time. I also have to give you credit there. Well, that was most of the questions that I had there, but I cannot let you go yet. I have a quick closing rapid fire round if you're ready for it. You're right. Of course. Okay, so very few questions, but single word like quick answers. Okay. The humans versus water issues by 2030 will mastercard process more transactions initiated by a human or by an autonomous AI agent. More value by consumers, more transactions by agents. Got it. Okay, the physical relic now. So what year does the physical plastic card officially become a museum piece? No time soon. It will be well after my time. It will still plastic. You still love your cards, you're and you still love them. The crypto wallets are there or dying to have a physical one, ideally a metal one, so that the crypto wallets can can throw it is with a client on the table. It is still a symbol of a physical symbol of what you have. So the plastic or the metal will be there to stay. Awesome. What is the most underrated infrastructure challenge in payments? Trust. Getting that trust embedded in everything we do is under this one under not not enough understood, but incredibly underrated and incredibly important. Okay. The last one then. What is the one payment friction point you are personally obsessed with fixing by the end of the decade? Frictionless and secure payments everywhere we consume or wants to pay. That is that is our obsession. And I think by 2030 we'll we'll have it fixed. Well, all the best with that you are it was such an insightful discussion. Thank you for Bloomberg Tech Distraptors. I'm Vickia Girard and we'll see you next time.