Mastercard
Three strategic priorities, Long-term growth
Our strategy centers on growing our core, diversifying our customers and geographies and building new areas for the future
Three strategic priorities
Mastercard earned $32.8 billion of net revenue in 2025, up 16%, on $10.6 trillion of spending on cards carrying its brands. Its strategy is to grow its core, diversify into new customers and countries, and build new areas for the future, through three priorities that it says strengthen and depend on each other: consumer payments, commercial and new payment flows, and services and other solutions.
Consumer payments
Choice and flexibility to pay across cards, real-time payments, and account-based transactions.
- 01Cash displacementReplace cash by widening acceptance, opening up closed-loop and domestic networks, and reaching under-used uses such as paying bills.
- 02Brand preferenceWin preference with benefits, digital cards, more tokens, wider authentication, and simpler online checkout.
- 03Tokens and the networkExtend the network to tokenise credentials, identities, assets, and data, and modernise it for real-time card payments.
11 February 2026About 40% of all Mastercard transactions were tokenised in 2025.
11 February 2026Mastercard launched Agent Pay for payments made by AI agents, and opened it to every cardholder in the US in 2025.
30 July 2026Gross dollar volume grew 8% in the second quarter of 2026, to $2.9 trillion, and cross-border volume 12%.
Mastercard’s 174 million commercial cards carried $1.4 trillion of spending in 2025
That is about $8,100 a card, against about $3,600 on a consumer credit card and $2,500 on a debit or prepaid card. Spending on commercial cards also grew fastest, by 11%.
Cards are those carrying Mastercard’s brand at the end of 2025; spending is for the year. The spending per card is worked out from the two.
Show how the priorities feed each other.
Mastercard does not leave its three priorities side by side; it says how they connect: more payments bring more transactions and data onto the network, the data makes better services, and the services win new payments deals. We recommend drawing the loop between a plan’s pillars, so that people see why work on one pays off in another.
Count the enablers, but keep them separate.
Mastercard lists six enablers under its priorities, from people and brand to data, technology, and its franchise. They support every priority without competing for a place among them. We recommend listing what a strategy depends on apart from what it sets out to do, so that a plan of three priorities does not grow to nine.
Measure the newer business on its own.
Mastercard reports its services apart from its payment network, and services grew 23% in 2025 against 12% for the network. We recommend giving a priority its own line in the results as soon as it can carry one, because a business that is only ever counted inside another can grow without anyone seeing it.
Sources
Headwater is not connected with Mastercard Incorporated. Mastercard, Mastercard Move, and Agent Pay are trade marks of their owners. Updated 5 October 2026.