Latest / Leaders In Payments / Before the Transaction Series: Chad Wallace, Global Head of Commercial Solutions at Mastercard | Episode 254

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Before the Transaction Series: Chad Wallace, Global Head of Commercial Solutions at Mastercard | Episode 254 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:04
  Greg Myers: Hi, chad, and welcome to this episode of the Leaders in Payment podcast, where we're looking at all of the things that happened before a transaction, or, put another way, before money ever moves.
• 0:13
  Greg Myers: And, of course, card issuing and the digitization of cash and checks, especially when it comes to the B2B world, is one of those things.
• 0:21
  Greg Myers: So welcome to the show.
• 0:23
  Chad Wallace: Oh, thank you for having me, Greg.
• 0:25
  Greg Myers: So first let's just talk about you a little bit.
• 0:27
  Chad Wallace: Tell our audience a little bit about yourself, maybe a little of your personal and professional background, yeah, so actually I grew up in the state of Tennessee and went to college and then started joining and was predominantly in the consumer side of banking for a majority of my career.
• 0:44
  Chad Wallace: About 10 years ago I joined the corporate banking side when I was at Capital One.
• 0:49
  Chad Wallace: I spent a number of years at Capital One and their Treasury Management Group, joined Goldman Sachs after that and let the build out of their transaction banking business and then recently joined MasterCard about a year and a half ago and so excited to be here.
• 1:02
  Chad Wallace: I run our commercial team, which is essentially our corporate payments products here at MasterCard and responsible for our product, our engineering teams and then also our sales teams that sit all across the globe.
• 1:15
  Greg Myers: Okay, Okay Great.
• 1:16
  Greg Myers: That's a good segue into the next question.
• 1:18
  Greg Myers: Tell us about the commercial solutions group.
• 1:21
  Greg Myers: Maybe cover some of the products and services that you guys offer there.
• 1:25
  Chad Wallace: Yeah, so when I joined our team at MasterCard, we started on a journey to define who we are.
• 1:34
  Chad Wallace: First and foremost, we said you know our predominantly our customers are large corporates all the way down to more middle market corporates and those should sit across the globe.
• 1:45
  Chad Wallace: And we thought about the product set.
• 1:47
  Chad Wallace: And when I joined we had predominantly a commercial card set of products, and so those commercial card products are predominantly used for travel entertainment, we're used for procurement purposes, they're used for our fleet program.
• 2:03
  Chad Wallace: So we have a number of of a fleet issuers that sit within our mix.
• 2:08
  Chad Wallace: And then we have an accounts payable product, that is is a virtual card product that we use.
• 2:14
  Chad Wallace: So we have a platform that is designed to be able to issue virtual cards and then we also have partner with a number of companies that issue our virtual cards for accounts payable use cases.
• 2:28
  Greg Myers: Okay, so let's let's dive into the topic for for discussion, which, of course, is the digitization of cash.
• 2:36
  Greg Myers: Can you give us a quick history of this movement from cards and other non cash or check solutions to, you know, for commercial enterprises?
• 2:45
  Greg Myers: Give us a little history of that?
• 2:47
  Chad Wallace: Yeah, so if we take about thinking, about this across the globe and we think about this in the US.
• 2:52
  Chad Wallace: I think there are some differences in the ways that we've seen the use of checks and cash and then digital payments transpire over the last few years and we take a look at the history around that.
• 3:05
  Chad Wallace: A lot of checking cash usage in the United States has been the normal way to pay for either large corporates to pay small businesses or small businesses to pay their their suppliers.
• 3:18
  Chad Wallace: More and more, especially, as we thought about, such as we take a look at what happened during the pandemic, people are prioritizing the aspect of digitizing their peculiar to pay process and their order to cash process.
• 3:32
  Chad Wallace: You know, I think we all went home during that period of time, during the pandemic, and we needed to figure out a way to make sure that we paid our suppliers and also got paid from the buyers of our goods and services.
• 3:44
  Chad Wallace: And we've seen this big shift over the last few years to make sure that people are using software to automate those processes.
• 3:53
  Chad Wallace: People are reducing the amount of checks that are cut, the amount of cash that is cut, and looking for ways to be able to optimize their payment processes.
• 4:01
  Chad Wallace: Now, you know, some of that transaction volume will go to more EFT or wire transfer types of solutions.
• 4:10
  Chad Wallace: And then some corporates are adopting the use of card products, especially for working capital purposes, and more and more we're seeing that usage of a card based product be used, embedded into the procurement process, used for that working capital benefit and used to be able to optimize the liquidity of corporates overall.
• 4:34
  Chad Wallace: And so when we think about that shift in checking cash being moved over to either a card based product or an EFT product, you know it's a big shift of what MasterCard has been focused on overall.
• 4:48
  Chad Wallace: We have also seen the change in the consumer expectations, which is the fact that people are employees, they have a specific consumer experience that they've known to love, and why can't they experience that at work?
• 5:04
  Chad Wallace: And so this expectation around the fact that your life as an employee sitting in a finance department should be as easy as your consumer life, and that requires a lot of procurement platforms and order to cash platforms, accounts, receivable platforms to be able to really think about the experience for those users.
• 5:27
  Chad Wallace: The next aspect that we've seen is really around this generational shift of people in the workforce, where the expectation of people coming out of college into the workforce really requires them to think about the use of data science, to think about the use of digital technologies in order to get their work done and being able to focus on high value ad services.
• 5:54
  Chad Wallace: And so often what we're seeing from the finance departments is the next generation of talent coming in, being able to work as an analyst, move their way up through the organization and then really focus on that use of data.
• 6:09
  Chad Wallace: And what we've seen is many of these people that are coming into finance roles have also come from a background that's not necessarily just finance, but maybe they've double majored in some type of technology degree as well as finance and looking at how to apply technology into the finance teams overall.
• 6:28
  Chad Wallace: And then, finally, I call out, this economic landscape that we've got is ultimately post COVID.
• 6:34
  Chad Wallace: A lot of companies have been looking at their operating margin and determining how to best optimize A their workforce, b the way that they use capital.
• 6:44
  Chad Wallace: C also the planning around how they think about the sites that they have.
• 6:50
  Chad Wallace: And ultimately, what we've been seeing is a real push on determining how best to use the liquidity that they have for either product investment, determining how their people are going to come to work in a hybrid mode and then really capital allocation across their business and so that usage of check and cash that was originally predominant in the corporate world.
• 7:14
  Chad Wallace: We're seeing that integration between the platforms that finance teams use to be able to think about the data aspects, make better decisions around how they use that capital, how they use that liquidity and then, more and more, the aspect of that moving over to more of a digitized payment product, whether that's an EFT, a wire transfer or a virtual card product tends to be the path of travel that we've seen, and we've seen that predominantly in the US.
• 7:42
  Chad Wallace: We've also seen that in many other economies as well.
• 7:45
  Chad Wallace: I was just out in Asia recently and having a lot of conversations with our clients across Korea and Japan and big topics around how the use of virtual card is being adopted by certain markets, certain industry verticals and how that working capital benefit really helps the corporate navigate that transition to more of a digital economy.
• 8:10
  Greg Myers: Yeah, you gave kind of four reasons that this sort of shift has happened.
• 8:16
  Greg Myers: Do you feel like any one of them is the reason, or do you think it's just a combination of the four?
• 8:23
  Chad Wallace: I think it's an interesting combination of various different aspects.
• 8:27
  Chad Wallace: I think some of the consumer expectations that people have, where the workforce expects a better experience I think that was a generational shift.
• 8:40
  Chad Wallace: That had already been happening three pandemic.
• 8:42
  Chad Wallace: But once the pandemic happened, you know, we have really seen that spike hit because ultimately, I mean, people really just did not have the ability to manage their day to day check and cash usage, which typically was done in the office, and then they had to need to think about that process overall and how to digitize that.
• 9:02
  Chad Wallace: So I think that acceleration from the pandemic was a good tipping point for the usage of these products.
• 9:08
  Chad Wallace: But a lot around the economic landscape, a lot around the generational shift that we've seen and the expectation to deliver a consumer grade experience I think those trends were happening prior to the pandemic and that acceleration just happened as soon as the pandemic happened.
• 9:24
  Greg Myers: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:24
  Greg Myers: Well, this whole sort of B2B payment space is really fascinating to me.
• 9:29
  Greg Myers: I feel like it's so large and under penetrated.
• 9:32
  Greg Myers: There's so much room to make a difference there.
• 9:36
  Greg Myers: But let's talk about it from the ecosystem perspective, like who are the main players and how does it all work together?
• 9:44
  Chad Wallace: Yeah.
• 9:44
  Chad Wallace: So I think we can break it down into two different aspects.
• 9:47
  Chad Wallace: One would be the non-corted space.
• 9:50
  Chad Wallace: So those are your traditional EFT and wire transfers, where you have a corporate who is a buyer, who needs to be able to pay a supplier.
• 9:58
  Chad Wallace: They obtain the account number of that supplier, they save that information into their ERP system or their procurement platform, they receive that invoice, be able to generate that payment and then send that payment out.
• 10:12
  Chad Wallace: Now there's a lot of components to that ecosystem.
• 10:15
  Chad Wallace: There's a lot of aspects of having to maintain really critical information in an ERP system, in a software platform, in order to generate that invoice, in order to be able to then move that money from an EFT or a wire transfer perspective.
• 10:30
  Chad Wallace: So I think you could take a look at that aspect of how those more traditional payments would happen in the sense, and what we've seen as of recent is this use of virtual card being adopted for accounts payable and accounts receivable use cases, one of which would be predominantly for the working capital benefit, but also for the data transmission and the security and charge back rules that we have adopted as part of that.
• 10:57
  Chad Wallace: Now, when you think about that ecosystem, there's a different set of players that are involved, rather than the EFT and wire transfer space Number one for B2B payments to be able to be facilitated via virtual card.
• 11:10
  Chad Wallace: You've got, essentially, the network, the network being, you know, as what we provide as mastercard is this open loop global network where we're connected to banks all over the world, and what we do is we create those, that interoperability between a institution that's initiating the payment and in the institution that's receiving the payment.
• 11:32
  Chad Wallace: We have issuing banks, because we have the issuers, who is going to then onboard that corporate?
• 11:38
  Chad Wallace: They're going to be able to set the payment up, they're going to be able to then initiate that payment to the end supplier, and then you have the acquiring institution, and so that could be a bank, it could be a partner who is an employer, and then the supplier is going to receive that payment.
• 11:56
  Chad Wallace: So, essentially, you've got two sides of the network.
• 11:58
  Chad Wallace: You've got the network itself, you've got the two sides the issuer and the acquire and then those are going to be connected into the buyer and supplier who are using those services.
• 12:09
  Chad Wallace: Now, the important part of that that's, I guess, your traditional core party model.
• 12:13
  Chad Wallace: The important part that we've been working on significantly is how do we then take that to the next level, which is the buyer and the supplier are using an ERP system or they're using a procurement platform, or they're using an account receivable or we're going to cash buy form, and how do we embed the tools to be able to facilitate those payments into the platforms that they use today?
• 12:36
  Chad Wallace: And so, when we think about the ecosystem overall, there's aspect of the payment component which I mentioned, which is the, the buyer, the issuer, the acquire, but ultimately the initiation of that payment and the receipt of that payment is part of the story, and the other part of the story is really around the data and the reconciliation that we can provide as part of that open link network.
• 13:01
  Chad Wallace: So that's why we've been partnering with a number of ERP systems, a number of procurement platforms, a number of order to cash platforms or accounts receivable platforms to be able to say let's go ahead and pre integrate, let's go ahead and build out the capability to where we can transmit not only to pay that we can transmit the data to be able to reconcile.
• 13:24
  Chad Wallace: At the end of the day, supplier needs to be able to reconcile and the ability for them to be able to reconcile their books is a key part of that value proposition, and then we've seen this rise of fintechs as well in the space, and so more and more fintechs are interested in the B2B space, where they're going out and they're selling their solutions to either small businesses selling their solutions to large corporates or in the middle market, and they've been focusing on either, let's say, the procurement process.
• 13:52
  Chad Wallace: They've been focused on travel and travel and expense.
• 13:55
  Chad Wallace: A lot of T&E players that are out there that are building large ecosystems where they're offering expense management, spend management capabilities, and they may have started out in a small business space but they've been graduating to more middle market customers than graduating to large corporate customers.
• 14:13
  Chad Wallace: And that rise of these fintechs in the ecosystem I think is really been a byproduct of the fact of that generational shift that I mentioned earlier and the fact that the experience that the FinTechs are providing is giving that consumer grade experience that the people are expecting, that people are wanting, and I think that that ecosystem overall, when you've layered in the FinTechs, we're seeing a lot of innovation happening in that space as well.
• 14:45
  Greg Myers: Yeah, good segue into the next question, and you talked about this surge in FinTechs hitting this B2B ecosystem.
• 14:51
  Greg Myers: How is MasterCard working with these emerging players?
• 14:55
  Chad Wallace: Yes, we have a really strong program that we partner with FinTechs that are across the globe.
• 15:03
  Chad Wallace: I spend a lot of time traveling.
• 15:06
  Chad Wallace: I meet with a lot of financial institutions that we partner with.
• 15:10
  Chad Wallace: I meet with a lot of the FinTechs that we partner with and, depending on the geography that we go to, I see a lot of interesting innovative topics happening in various different markets.
• 15:24
  Chad Wallace: When I think about that, a lot of what we do is we've been spending time building out our regional sales and business development teams, who have focused on cultivating those relationships with the financial institutions and cultivating the relationships with the FinTechs as well.
• 15:43
  Chad Wallace: And when we think about that.
• 15:44
  Chad Wallace: FinTech program.
• 15:45
  Chad Wallace: What we've seen is a real strong partnership with the FinTech community in various different markets.
• 15:54
  Chad Wallace: Where we've been able to go in, we've been able to ideate around what a potential future could look like.
• 16:00
  Chad Wallace: That potential future could be in procurement.
• 16:03
  Chad Wallace: It could be in certain parts of finance.
• 16:04
  Chad Wallace: It could be in that TNE use case that I mentioned for expense management or spend management.
• 16:08
  Chad Wallace: We spend time whiteboarding with that organization, coming up with what that future looks like where they want to focus on.
• 16:16
  Chad Wallace: We then focus on that delivery and the execution.
• 16:21
  Chad Wallace: I think that's a critical part of the aspect of being able to work closely with the FinTech, move at speed, be able to paint that vision, work through the execution plan, get the FinTech live in our ecosystem and then be able to see the growth curve around that.
• 16:41
  Chad Wallace: And we have a pretty unique aspect of partnership which is really important.
• 16:47
  Chad Wallace: Everything that we do in the FinTech space and the digital player space is very based on human-centered design.
• 16:55
  Chad Wallace: It's based on solving the needs in a new and innovative way and then it's also being able to think of ways that we can create scale out of those partnerships.
• 17:04
  Chad Wallace: We have quite a few partnerships in the FinTech space where we've been able to see these companies start out in one market and be able to grow within other markets as well, and we spend a great deal of time making sure that those FinTechs are connected with as many opportunities as they can in order to be able to grow and expand themselves into other markets.
• 17:28
  Greg Myers: Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
• 17:29
  Greg Myers: So you know, we've talked about some of the companies and players in the space.
• 17:33
  Greg Myers: We've talked about some of the solutions, but what are the key benefits of these solutions?
• 17:39
  Greg Myers: Why are these corporates adopting these digital solutions?
• 17:42
  Greg Myers: Can you talk about some of those benefits?
• 17:44
  Chad Wallace: Yes, I think six key points that we wanted to make here.
• 17:47
  Chad Wallace: One is when we partner in this space, the first and foremost, we focus on the aspect of security here, and so when we think about the aspect of being able to move money from a buyer to a supplier in an ecosystem, we know that there's some risk involved in being able to move that money, and the fact that we operate a global network allows us to be able to take a look at those transactions in detail in real time, make decisions around what we believe is potentially a risky transaction and be able to flag that for either fraud purposes, risk management purposes, but really get to the point where we know that that money is going to be able to move, the settlement's going to be able to happen.
• 18:34
  Chad Wallace: We feel confident in this scenario that that transaction is a safe and sound transaction and we have rules in place that, in the event that something did happen from a risk perspective, we have we have charged back and we have these capability of being able to recall those funds and make sure that we make that buyer and supplier whole overall.
• 18:58
  Chad Wallace: And we believe that by taking the network itself, the fact that you've got not only the ability to move the money from the buyer to the supplier, but we have these value added services that we deliver on top of the transaction itself.
• 19:12
  Chad Wallace: I'll give you an example of that.
• 19:14
  Chad Wallace: So we have been recently launched a platform, and that platform is designed for us to be able to take a look at an accounts payable file, determine if a supplier has ever accepted card, make a recommendation to the buyer on whether or not they should pay that transaction over a wire transfer and EFT or use the virtual card product to maximize their working capital benefits to make a decision on whether or not that supplier is going to accept card in that scenario.
• 19:44
  Chad Wallace: But also what we're doing as part of that is we're taking a look at the suppliers information and also providing some great scoring capability for the buyer to determine whether or not they should be partnering with that supplier.
• 19:57
  Chad Wallace: So taking a look and really risk scoring the supplier overall and helping the buyer make a better decision around how they're going to use their supply chain.
• 20:07
  Chad Wallace: And so that aspect of being able to not only move money but really create a services layer around the ecosystem and around the payment itself is pretty key for us, enriching the value that we provide to our customers.
• 20:24
  Chad Wallace: In addition to that, payment status is very important.
• 20:26
  Chad Wallace: We hear a lot about this in the various different ways to move money and the fact that we can move money across the globe instantaneously.
• 20:35
  Chad Wallace: You know exactly when the supplier receives that payment.
• 20:38
  Chad Wallace: We have notifications that are designed that when that supplier accepts that payment on that side the buyer is notified, so that way they understand exactly that that payment has settled.
• 20:49
  Chad Wallace: And so that payment status aspect is very important for a lot of the use cases that our buyers and suppliers use our platform and the other part is we've got this.
• 21:01
  Chad Wallace: This aspect of having an ISO based framework, which is everything that we transmit across our ecosystem, is designed around that ISO messaging, so very rich data standards and the ability to be able to include a significant amount of information in the payment message, so that way the supplier, when they receive that payment, understands exactly what it's for and it's for the full value that they originally transmitted, which then leads to this improved user experience I mentioned that earlier in the conversation being able to that we're fully integrated into the payments initiation component all the way to the receivables.
• 21:42
  Chad Wallace: That allows that buyer and the supplier to be able to automate as much as possible.
• 21:47
  Chad Wallace: And the last part that I'd call out is mastercard overall is heavily involved in a lot of ESG efforts and and as we think about the world in the future, you know, we certainly see the rise of this virtual card product, which essentially eliminates the need for a lot of plastic to be used in the, in the, in the carded world, and so, therefore, tools that we design, such as the platform that I mentioned earlier, global treasury intelligence, that that allows us to kind of risk or transactions, that allows us to make sure that we can provide that ESG scoring, and then also the rise of the virtual card capability, allows us to make sure that we create a really sustainable ecosystem overall.
• 22:35
  Greg Myers: Okay, and anytime we talk about sort of digitizing payments and I think especially in this B2B space data comes up and you mentioned data earlier, so can you speak a little bit more to the importance of this data for your customers?
• 22:49
  Chad Wallace: Yeah, data, I think, is key and we see a lot of interesting use cases where, when a buyer initiates a payment, the ability to include reconciliation data into that payment message is certainly part of the story.
• 23:09
  Chad Wallace: But when we think about the use of data overall, the fact that we've gone out and embedded ourselves into the accounts payable platforms, the ERP systems, the accounts receivable platforms by doing that, it really allows that real-time information to be able to move across our network, be able to be received by the buyer or the supplier so that way they know the payment status message, they know the fact that the payment has been delivered and that they've received the information to be able to reconcile their books from the supplier's perspective.
• 23:39
  Chad Wallace: And by doing so, we're seeing more and more use cases where people can manage their liquidity on an intraday basis and ultimately, that's what a lot of corporates that we've talked to are thinking through on a pretty regular basis is how do I make better decisions around how to deploy my capital?
• 23:56
  Chad Wallace: A lot of times that means that they're taking a look at where they stand either throughout the day from a liquidity perspective, or they're looking at end-of-day balances and trying to make decisions of how they're going to manage the cash flow for the next day.
• 24:12
  Chad Wallace: And the more that we can automate, the more that we can create the real-time nature of the network and be able to use that in the tools that they use.
• 24:20
  Chad Wallace: That power, use that information, use that data in the tools that they use on a regular basis, allows them to make better decisions around how they're going to deploy that capital.
• 24:29
  Chad Wallace: And we see this across not only the you know, let's say, large corporate space, where there's teams of finance people who are coming up with the cash flow projections and their liquidity positions for end-of-day, but we're also seeing that significantly around small businesses, and I'd like to certainly call out the fact that small businesses, especially from a working capital perspective, are really thinking about that day-to-day balance.
• 24:56
  Chad Wallace: They're thinking about when they can pay that invoice, they're thinking about how to optimize day sales outstanding and they are making better decisions based on how they're going to use their money and when they're going to pay and how they're going to get paid by being able to leverage these types of products and being able to think about the ways that data is used across the network.
• 25:22
  Chad Wallace: Overall, I do think data is key and it drives a lot of innovation in our space.
• 25:29
  Chad Wallace: As an example, we have been, you know, working with a number of companies to come up with how we think about the future of expense management and when you think about the aspect of being able to book a trip, being able to know the fact that your employee is moving from one location to another for a business meeting, providing a payment tool for that employee to be able to make that trip, have that payment tool locked down for very specific use cases so that way you avoid any type of risk or any type of fraud as a company and then be able to then take that information and automate the expense management process overall to where people don't need to submit expense reports anymore.
• 26:17
  Chad Wallace: I mean, ultimately, that is a data play, that is, the ability to know enough information about that trip to say that throughout the trip, as I charge transactions to the card, whether that be the hotel or the restaurant with a client, that transaction should just go ahead and be processed and should go ahead and settle and need to manually intervene in the expense management space.
• 26:44
  Chad Wallace: So data, the use of AI very key to automating as much as possible because ultimately we want our finance teams to be able to create a lot of value add versus manually or versus managing specific widgets on a day-to-day basis.
• 27:04
  Greg Myers: Yeah, that use case that you just mentioned about not having to do expense reports again would make a lot of salespeople and executives that travel really, really happy.
• 27:17
  Chad Wallace: Very true.
• 27:18
  Greg Myers: Yeah, so all of this it just seems like a no brainer, Like why would a company not wanna do this?
• 27:24
  Greg Myers: So?
• 27:25
  Greg Myers: But obviously there are some that haven't.
• 27:28
  Greg Myers: But can you talk to the challenges, Like, what challenges do they face when they're thinking about adopting these solutions?
• 27:36
  Chad Wallace: We see corporates and small businesses of middle market companies in various stages of the life cycle of adoption of various different technologies.
• 27:45
  Chad Wallace: Some of those are early adopters, some of those are in the process of kind of waiting and seeing and determining how their teams are going to use the tools, and what we found is there are various different aspects of where those different size companies are in the life cycle of the adoption of the products.
• 28:06
  Chad Wallace: Overall, when we think about the challenges of adopting some of these tools, frankly, change can be hard and I think a lot of software companies recognize the fact that when they go and pitch the idea of helping provide software tools to the employees for procurement or for travel and expense, or for any of the tools that sit within the finance organization, they know that there's going to be some type of change management that needs to happen.
• 28:38
  Chad Wallace: That change management could be.
• 28:40
  Chad Wallace: It could be thinking about how that that piece of software is going to be deployed in the corporate's environment.
• 28:47
  Chad Wallace: It could be the change in the way that the finance teams are working together.
• 28:51
  Chad Wallace: It could be the change in the way that the business unit that is supported by the finance team needs to change and ultimately we see that the ability to be able to create that interconnected environment is something that's really important for a lot of these fintech or technology companies to overcome as part of that sales process to be able to make sure they communicate the value add to the corporate who's going to be buying that product.
• 29:21
  Chad Wallace: And the more that we see these products being used and being adopted, the faster we see that trend and take up happening across the market or ecosystem overall.
• 29:33
  Chad Wallace: I think one of the big things is, by using these products, I think there's a greater affinity to be able to make sure that your finance process and that your procurement teams and your treasury teams are using tools that are designed in a best way from a cybersecurity perspective, from a risk management perspective, and by doing so, we think that the value is certainly there from a business case perspective.
• 30:04
  Chad Wallace: But we know that there are some risk adverse people in the organizations who may be trying to determine how best to adopt those products and the partnerships that we've seen, especially some of the technology companies that have been very focused on the onboarding process to get their clients set up, to get those corporates to be able to use the platform, show the demo, be able to walk into the sales process throughout the business case, have been pretty successful in onboarding the corporates and being able to help them through that transition.
• 30:33
  Chad Wallace: And so that aspect of handholding the implementation all the way through the delivery process and then being able to get that finance team up and running with all the change that's necessary in order to make that happen whether there's a technology change or whether that's a process change has been a key to some of the fintechs and some of the technology companies that we partner, a key to really do their success.
• 30:56
  Greg Myers: Sure, absolutely.
• 30:57
  Greg Myers: Well, what do you think the future looks like for this B2B space in, say, the next five to seven years?
• 31:03
  Chad Wallace: If I had a crystal ball, I would.
• 31:06
  Chad Wallace: I would love to figure that out, but I think that when we think about the space, we certainly think that the tools that the finance teams have to be, they have to be designed in a way that's focused around the human.
• 31:21
  Chad Wallace: So that aspect of human centered design that I mentioned earlier is extremely critical.
• 31:27
  Chad Wallace: The ability to really think through how payments, how data, are embedded into the experience that the employee uses to make their life easier is really critical, and when we think about that aspect, essentially the payment becomes invisible at that point and you're really managing the experience of the employee.
• 31:52
  Chad Wallace: You're managing the liquidity and capital allocation that you can get out of that, but ultimately the payment itself becomes a byproduct of the fact that you've got this great experience that's assigned around the employee and that they can manage that through the life cycle just like they would manage in their consumer life.
• 32:12
  Chad Wallace: The digitization around the aspect of being able to use workflows that are designed around how the company needs to operate is also very important, and more and more companies are focused on solving not a very specific niche use case, but taking a step back and looking at how they can help the life cycle overall, from a procurement perspective, from a travel perspective, from any component of the finance organization's perspective.
• 32:48
  Chad Wallace: We're seeing this use of API based platforms.
• 32:52
  Chad Wallace: So interconnectivity between platforms.
• 32:55
  Chad Wallace: You see procurement platforms integrating with accounts receivable platforms.
• 33:00
  Chad Wallace: You see ERP systems integrating with procurement platforms.
• 33:04
  Chad Wallace: You see HR systems integrating and looking at how they can look at how they can deliver spend management components, and so I think that you're going to continue to see the fact that the aspect of digitization will continue to drive the adoption, will continue to drive the aspect of having those embedded payments and the use of API is that way those platforms could be interconnected, so that way the data moves across those platforms will continue to be key.
• 33:33
  Chad Wallace: And as you think about that interconnectivity, I think we're going to end up seeing some type of platform consolidation.
• 33:40
  Chad Wallace: So that means certain.
• 33:43
  Chad Wallace: I do feel like certain companies will end up thinking through how their platforms will converge at some point and that might mean that you have certain companies who traditionally were more geared around one aspect of the finance group to be focused on other components, as they think through how to have essentially a one shop stop where a finance team could come in they can manage their workflows overall, and to think through how those will come together.
• 34:13
  Chad Wallace: We do certainly see a rise of artificial intelligence use cases.
• 34:18
  Chad Wallace: I mentioned the fact earlier that we've got use cases that are coming up in the expense management side.
• 34:24
  Chad Wallace: But think of a world where, if you receive a meeting invite, that meeting invite is for a meeting that's in another location, other than you.
• 34:34
  Chad Wallace: Are that why not?
• 34:35
  Chad Wallace: Should you be auto recommended how you're going to get to that location with either a flight or a train and hotel options.
• 34:42
  Chad Wallace: So we certainly think that the aspect of artificial intelligence will be critically important to help streamline the way that finance teams work together and streamline the way that the employee experience comes together.
• 34:54
  Chad Wallace: And finally, I think, as I mentioned earlier, the ESG part is very important.
• 34:58
  Chad Wallace: More and more of the RFPs that we receive and the conversations that we have with CFOs and with corporates in general are very focused around how sustainability is going to be a big component of the future of their business overall.
• 35:16
  Chad Wallace: And so ESG, I think, will continue to be a very important and will continue to rise in the importance of what corporates are thinking about overall in their payment flows and in their procurement processes and within their treasury operations.
• 35:30
  Greg Myers: Okay.
• 35:31
  Greg Myers: Well, let's circle back to Mastercard, and you just mentioned a lot of these trends.
• 35:34
  Greg Myers: How is Mastercard going to take advantage of these trends?
• 35:38
  Chad Wallace: Yeah, so we are very focused on a couple of the aspects one would be I mentioned today we talked a lot about the virtual card aspect.
• 35:47
  Chad Wallace: We certainly think that more and more as we think through the aspect of our products and services, there's products and services traditionally have been in the carded space, but that'll expand to be able to service accounts, payable use cases, accounts receivable use cases, treasury, working capital but really focused on our beyond card strategy.
• 36:08
  Chad Wallace: Overall I think Mastercard has diversified its assets, specifically in the in the consumer space.
• 36:14
  Chad Wallace: We've also started diversifier assets in the small business space and the middle market space in the corporate space, and so overall we take a look at what our strategy is to become a well-rounded payment company that services needs beyond card in addition to that we've got Embedded finance use cases where we've gone out.
• 36:34
  Chad Wallace: We partnered with ERP systems, we partnered with the curament platforms, we partnered with marketplaces to be able to embed payment capabilities, embed data products, embed risk management products into those tools so that way those tools can deliver a better experience to our corporates overall.
• 36:53
  Chad Wallace: And then we're very focused on the fact that all of our tools should be API first, the digital first.
• 37:00
  Chad Wallace: We want to not have to have Corporates who use our platform have to swivel chair between different applications.
• 37:07
  Chad Wallace: We want to be embedded right there, and we do that through the use of the APIs that we develop.
• 37:13
  Chad Wallace: And though all of our capabilities are available on our Mastercard developer platform, which allows developers of our customers to be able to go on, they understand the catalogs of what services that we offer, they understand the documentation of how to build their applications on top of our developer platform, and it allows a pretty robust conversation with the chief technology officer of the corporate or the company that we're working with to be able to really understand our tools and services.
• 37:45
  Chad Wallace: And so we spend a lot of time making sure that our developer platform is available to our customers and has a wealth of information, a wealth of testing capabilities and tools on it that allows our corporates to be able to Maximize the way that their products and services are going to be delivered to to their customers.
• 38:04
  Greg Myers: Okay, well, chad, we've obviously covered a lot of ground on this topic.
• 38:07
  Greg Myers: Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up the show?
• 38:10
  Chad Wallace: I think, overall, we did cover a lot today.
• 38:14
  Chad Wallace: I mean, mastercard is at its core by technology company, I think, for traditionally we've been thought about as a card company and more and more We've invested in many different tools to be able to diversify the types of payments products that we can offer to our customers, the types of data products that we can offer to our customers, the types of cyber or risk tools that we offer to our customers, and so I think, overall, mastercard is important to know that we are certainly a broad range technology company and there's a lot of benefits of how we can create ecosystems by the network that we've created.
• 38:51
  Chad Wallace: So, you know, I think the more that we can focus on that, the more that we can offer these better, rich and frictionless experiences for our customers.
• 39:01
  Greg Myers: Okay, well, I appreciate you you sharing that.
• 39:04
  Greg Myers: That's a great summary for the show.
• 39:06
  Greg Myers: Again, thank you for being here today.
• 39:09
  Greg Myers: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being on the show today.
• 39:12
  Greg Myers: Thank you, greg, really appreciate it and to all you listeners out there.
• 39:16
  Greg Myers: I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story All right, I.