Mastercard and The Future of Money: Crypto, AI Agents & Digital Payments with Ling Hai
Fresh out of the studio, Ling Hai, President of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa at Mastercard, joins us to explore how payment networks are evolving to embrace stable coins, AI agents, and the future of digital commerce across diverse global markets. He shares his career journey from management consulting to retail banking and eventually to Mastercard. Ling Hai shares that Mastercard is a global technology company that creates interoperability and universal acceptance, with technology services like cybersecurity, data insights, and consulting increasingly contributing to revenue beyond traditional payment processing. He highlights compelling innovations from Asia Pacific leading the way, including Singapore's nationwide open loop transit system and Mastercard's approach to stable coins as settlement vehicles alongside traditional currencies, while emphasizing how the company bridges the DeFi universe with the physical merchant world through on-ramp and off-ramp solutions for crypto adoption in markets like Latin America. Closing the conversation, Ling Hai shares what great looks like for MasterCard to become the operating system of commerce and the digital economy.
“Mastercard, in the end, is a global technology company. We run a global network, and we’re very much a data company. So, in all of this, when we handle people’s money and when we handle people’s data, trust is the most important thing. If we lose that, we lose our business. For us, that trust factor is absolutely critical — it’s embedded in everything we do.As the world evolves, we’ve gone from handling payments in the physical world, to e-commerce in the digital world. Tomorrow, with AI, it’s going to be agentic — agents will be doing commerce for us. But the common thread across all of this is still safety, security, trust, and also ease of use.Today’s consumer doesn’t want to trade off between convenience and security — they want both. So when we think about our solutions and services, that’s part of our design thinking. We must ensure they are easy, convenient, safe, secure, and trusted by everyone.” - Ling Hai
Profile: Ling Hai, President of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Mastercard (LinkedIn, Mastercard Profile)
Here is the edited transcript of our conversation:
Bernard Leong: Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong. With stable coins now signed into law in the United States, the impact of digital currencies and the transformation of payment infrastructure globally is accelerating. What are the implications for stable coins in the emerging market from the perspective of a payments network such as Mastercard? With me today is Hai, president of the Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa at Mastercard. Hai, welcome to the show and thank you for hosting me here in Mastercard, Singapore.
Ling Hai: It is great to be be here. Thank you for having me.
Bernard Leong: I always like to find out about the origin story of my guest on my show. So how did your career journey begin and what led you to Mastercard?
Ling Hai: First of all, I grew up in Shanghai and went to the U.S. when I was a teenager, immigrated to the U.S. of course. So got schooled and educated in the U.S. My first job, my first career started actually in management consulting. So, I did that for almost six years. Then I went into banking, but more on the retail side. So I worked a lot on credit cards for banks. I worked for MBNA, Bank of America and HSBC and so many times, Mastercard was actually my customer and partner sitting on the other side of the table. There were times when I said to myself, "There are things that I could do better if I was with Mastercard." Lo and behold, one day I was headhunted. When I heard it was actually Mastercard, I quickly said to myself, "Please sign me up. Love to join Mastercard and do things maybe a little bit differently."
Bernard Leong: So you led Mastercard across multiple continents. What are the key lessons from navigating such diverse regions?
Ling Hai: The one great thing about Mastercard is that we are a global company. But we serve in more than 200 markets. So one commonality is that the key ingredient to our success is what I call "glocal". You have to be globally consistent as a business model, but in every market we have to figure out a way to localize, to meet the local needs. So it is about finding that balance, the bridge, the need for the local markets and bridge that with our global model. That's when we are successful. Otherwise it is just gonna be a global brand that doesn't resonate.
Bernard Leong: So before we get to the main subject, reflecting on your career experience, what are the lessons from your career journey that you can share with my audience?
Ling Hai: There's so many of them. I think one of the key things is in every local market, the key success factor for Mastercard is we are able to use local talents. People who are global, but they're also local in the first instance. That's actually really important. I think the second thing that's really important is our leadership's ability to empower the local teams.
Things happen on the ground. We can't be there every day, every minute of the day. To have a strong local team that can win the hearts and minds of our customers is really a very important factor in our success. Which then brings me to my last point. As a leader of the company, one of my key learnings is that leadership is a real privilege, actually.
I don't take it for granted. I believe that people follow all of us leaders, not because of the titles we have, but truly because they feel there's something they can learn from us, insights they can gauge from us, and that is the reason they follow us. So for me, every day is still a learning opportunity. Just spoke about stable coins and I guess we'll discuss more. The market is changing, new things are constantly emerging. So how for the whole company as a team, we constantly learn and develop ourselves. I think that's very important.
Bernard Leong: So that's the concept of servant leadership and always be open to new things, which gets to the main subject of the day. I wanna talk about the future of digital payments and stable coins. To begin, I have two Mastercards on my wallet inside my wallet. Every day I use Mastercard for a lot of my payment transactions. Of course, I would love you to give me a high level overview of Mastercard's vision and mission and how it's evolving in the digital age.
Ling Hai: I don't wanna screw this up. So I actually want to just tell you what is the stated vision for Mastercard. We talk about how we connect and empower an inclusive digital economy that benefits everyone everywhere. If you look at our mission statement, it's about providing technology and services to make transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. So what does that tell you?
Mastercard in the end is a global technology company. We run a global network. We're very much a data company. So in all of this, when we handle people's money, when we handle people's data, trust is the most important thing. You lose that, we lose our business. So for us, that trust factor is very critical for our business, and it's embedded in everything we do. So, again, as the world evolves, previously we were handling payments in the physical world. Then it's e-commerce, the digital world. Tomorrow with AI, it's gonna be agentic. Agents will be doing commerce for us. But the commonality in all of this is still safety and security. Trust. Also ease of use. Convenience as well. I think today's consumer doesn't want to make a trade-off between ease and security. They want both. So when we think about our solutions and our services, that's part of the design thinking. We have to make sure it's easy, it's convenient, but it's also safe and secure, and it is trusted by everybody.
Bernard Leong: So, Hai, as the president of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, or EMEA in short, how do you see your role in driving that vision across these diverse and dynamic markets? Europe is a very different set of markets compared to Asia Pacific and even to the Middle East and Africa. Because the needs are very different.
Ling Hai: You are correct on the regions. First of all, my role is to foster collaboration. Oftentimes, I sometimes see teams trying to reinvent the wheel when something actually already exists in another market. But of course, it's difficult for the local team to understand what's happening around the world. That's my role because I have that view of everything that's going around the world, and so letting people reach across the aisle, learn from each other and collaborate. That's actually a very important thing for our company's business model.
The second thing that's very important is I, myself, sit in front of customers. When I say customers, we're talking about the banks and fintechs and merchants and governments as well. It's a very important part of my job, and I encourage all of our teammates to do the same thing. Because you think about it, we are a B2B model - business to business model. We can't just create our solutions or our products in the ivory tower. We need to talk to our customers to make sure they meet their needs and address their pain points. Oftentimes when I sit in front of customers, that's when my aha moments come. I'll be struggling with the solution. But talking to a company CEO, a bank CEO, all of a sudden I'm like, the answer's right there. So that's another thing. I think that's really important in our business model.
Bernard Leong: What will be the strategic priorities now that are unique to the region itself, including Asia Pacific, that you will be thinking about doubling down today?
Ling Hai: I wouldn't say unique, but maybe some of my regions are leading the way, especially like APAC. For example, what's really important right now for us is open loop transit. My world actually leads Mastercard in many markets. Singapore is a great example. It's completely open loop. You can use your card, tap and go into an MRT station. Singapore is one city state, so it's nationwide already. When Singapore, the city state, is open loop, the whole country is open loop. But the Netherlands has many cities, Amsterdam and others. The Netherlands is a nationwide open loop. That's also the collaboration with Mastercard. Australia is very advanced. UK in London is very advanced. We wanna see this everywhere because we believe fundamentally for a payment instrument to be top of wallet, it's really important that people use it for everyday spend, everyday use cases, and transit is a great example of that. But the other thing that makes transit really important is tourism. The world is more connected. People like to go travel around the world and see different places. Maybe with AI, people don't have to work as much. They'll have even more leisurely time. So to travel around the world, the transit oftentimes is the most intimidating thing when you go to a different country. Try to buy a subway ticket in Paris. It's very difficult. So to enable a consumer to use their everyday card to just tap and go into a transit system, that's really important for tourism. I think governments around the world realize that as well.
Bernard Leong: A lot of us who use Mastercard like myself, when I travel across, even within countries in Asia Pacific, the ease of use like just tapping my Mastercard credit card on that, I think we don't appreciate that ease and simplicity with that interoperability working in the background. But that interoperability just allows us to go through so many things. But can you give us a high level overview now on the current state of payments across Asia Pacific and what are the key trends you are very excited about?
Ling Hai: In Asia Pacific, I think one thing that's really interesting and exciting is it is really one of the most advanced regions. It's got everything. It's got card payments. It's got digital wallets. It's got account to account real-time payment. It has NFC as a form factor. It's got QR as a form factor. Like you, I live in Singapore as well. You see merchants take all forms of payments. It's multi-form factor as well. So it's really advanced. That's not just Singapore or Australia. It is also true for China. It's true in India now for the UPI. A lot of the Southeast ASEAN countries are also rapidly developing. But the other thing about Asia is with all the development, there's still a lot of cash opportunities. So cash still takes up a huge percentage of retail payments. Go to Japan, you actually cannot survive without cash in your pocket. Something around 40% of retail spend is still with cash. So for us, it's headroom to further digitize. So on the one hand, you have massive development, a lot of new technology, but on the other hand, you still have a lot of secular trend around cash conversion, digitization that makes Asia Pacific really exciting.
Bernard Leong: So where do you think the key enablers are? Is it in the infrastructure, policy, or ecosystem design?
Ling Hai: I think it's all of those things that you talked about. They're all important, but I would add another thing that's really important. I think when I look around the world where you start to see rapid development and adoption of new payment technology or digitization, it is consumer experience.
Bernard Leong: Given there are different countries with different regulatory frameworks in Asia Pacific, how do you feel in terms of whether they're progressing faster or slower than other regions, or maybe they're all equally moving at the same pace, but have very different needs for their regions?
Ling Hai: I have a slightly different view on this one. I think of regulation of any particular market, not relative to other regions or other markets, but relative to its own maturity, relative to its own innovation. Because this is the balance you need to strike. I think regulation needs to stay slightly behind innovation. If you are too much ahead, you kind of kill that animal spirit sometimes. So I think the balance of how you ensure regulation creates the level playing field, interoperability, or the certainty of a business environment, that's really important. Or safety, security, for example, for a payment method. That's what regulation has a role to play. But on the other hand, you wanna make sure regulation doesn't stifle innovation. It still gives the room for creativity to happen.
Bernard Leong: So what is the one thing you know about Mastercard or your work in digital payments that very few people do in your regions of interest?
Ling Hai: In general, in Mastercard, I think one thing most people don't really understand is we don't issue cards. We don't extend credit. We do not charge interest. Mastercard is a network that creates, it's really a switch. It can be a network of many wallets. It can be a network of other networks as well.
So Mastercard is the network, the switch in the middle that creates that interoperability and a universal acceptance for payment methods. We are more a technology company, a data company, and a cybersecurity company. I think that's what, because we have the word card in our name, in our brand name, a lot of the times people automatically think of us as a credit card company, but we are not.
Bernard Leong: If I dial back 10 years ago, I always think of Mastercard as a technology company. Because of all the things that you have to do, the payments, the infrastructure behind it, and even the security, the cybersecurity, doing fraud detection on it. So we are gonna come to a more interesting topic.
Ling Hai: Can I also maybe add one thing, and most people don't know. In fact, technology services increasingly contribute a much bigger percentage to our total revenue base. So our revenue contribution isn't just from payments, but also from services such as cybersecurity. Data insights, consulting, loyalty. So those are the things that are increasingly important for our revenue base as well.
Bernard Leong: So let's get into the most interesting topic, which is stablecoins. Now it's regulated in the U.S. It's bringing them closer to what I call mainstream financial systems. What does this development mean, not just for the Asia-Pacific region, but all the regions you've covered from your vantage point at Mastercard?
Ling Hai: I actually feel in the first instance, stable coins or crypto in general create more use cases for Mastercard. Think about today when we work with stablecoin or crypto exchanges like Coinbase. People need to use their cards to buy crypto. Largely as an asset, a speculative asset. Investment asset. So we enable that. It's something we call on ramp.
But we also do a lot of off ramp. So in Latin America, in countries where their domestic currency is a bit unstable, a little bit volatile, or there are currency controls in those countries, people also would love to figure out a way to spend money directly from their crypto wallet. But merchants don't take crypto directly or even stable coin today. So Mastercard creates a bridge and a vehicle: a Mastercard branded prepaid that allows consumers to use the money in their crypto wallet or balance to pay for merchant spend directly.
That's another big use case. Now, our network is gonna support stablecoin settlement. So it's no different than adding another currency. So our network can be settled in US dollars, Euro, Japanese Yen, and tomorrow we're gonna add USDC and tether. Those stablecoins will become a settlement vehicle as well. I do feel stable coins, if you ask me, overall hold a lot of potential, especially in B2B payments, wholesale settlement, but there's still a lot of work to do to really unlock the potential. Now in P2M retail spend, is that gonna be a significant solution for a need that is unmet? I have some question marks about this. Because if you look at a country like Singapore, retail payments are already highly digitized. So you ought to ask the question, what is the problem it is solving? But I do see use cases for crypto.
Bernard Leong: In countries like Pakistan and Turkey, they use it as inflation hedges basically. Where, but the general question now is: how are policy makers and institutions in Asia-Pac or even other regions reacting and how is Mastercard now positioning towards this shift to stable coins?
Ling Hai: I think the reaction from regulators and governments are also a mixed bag. If you look at the European Union, they're definitely not gonna try to encourage stable coins or crypto per se. They're gonna develop their own digital euro, Central Bank Digitals. In Asia, we have countries who take the same stance as well. I also feel Singapore has come out a long time ago to say in retail payment, I don't know if digital currency solves anything, but maybe in wholesale settlement, in cross-border remittances, for example. So it's all different. I think there are many different attitudes, but I think there's one thing that's really important in the end. If this is about money, consumers need to feel assured this money is gonna be good and it's gonna be secure, and it's gonna be accepted. That role has to be played by government oversight.
Bernard Leong: Actually, it's a bit ironic thinking in the Euro situation where the largest stable coin is Tether, which is actually, in some ways we can interpret it as a euro money market fund in a different way. We're talking about collaterally backed stablecoins. That means it's a one-to-one, collaterally backed to the dollar itself. Do you see now stable coins and digital wallets as potential solutions, or do they work best alongside traditional banking rails? Mastercard has been doing quite a lot of work on enabling these solutions at scale while also maintaining trust and security. Because I remember like three years back when I'm an angel investor in crypto companies, I remember the ease of firing ten thousand USD across the internet. Sometimes I ask myself, did the money actually transfer? Because then I realized, oh yeah, now I understand why Mastercard exists. Because I need to know whether it lands at the other side.
Ling Hai: You hit on a very important point. First, let me answer your question. I think my answer is yes. So maybe two, three weeks ago, a diehard crypto activist who's like a 21-year-old, showed me how he lives his life in the blockchain world. DeFi world. Decentralized finance. It's quite fascinating now, but if I look at the use case in that DeFi world today with crypto, with stable coins, it's still mostly investment.
It's taking the real world money and investing in crypto. Offering is very difficult. There's a little bit lending, hedging, or some derivatives as well, collateral using crypto as a collateral to cash out into real world money. So it's more investment activities. I think it's still a long way to actual payments. That is where I feel if you ask me, is the future gonna be DeFi only versus today's world. Like there are two universes, today's universe and the DeFi universe. I think the probability of both universes coexisting is much higher than the entire world being replaced by the DeFi universe.
Bernard Leong: I actually agree with you a hundred percent on that because I can't foresee a world where everybody goes decentralized finance.
Ling Hai: That's right.
Bernard Leong: I think there's still a certain respect or maybe even adherence to the fact that there is trust. There's security. Things like banks, things like Mastercard. You got it. The payment networks, whoever it is. There's still some trust within the institutions.
Ling Hai: You got it. So I think that's why I feel like the two universes will probably live alongside each other, and you're still gonna need some bridge between the two. I was also gonna add to your comment about trust. When maybe one thing people ought to ask me about Mastercard is when I explain the Mastercard business model to them, I often say payments isn't just about moving money from A to B. Oftentimes the ingredient, the secret sauce of the Mastercard business model is we address issues when things go wrong.
Like when money doesn't go from A to B, what happens? Or A said, I sent the money, but B said I never got it. Or B said, I gave the goods and services to A, but A never paid me. We have a whole set of franchise rules that talks about how do you resolve disputes if there is fraud. Who bears the liability? How does chargeback actually work? That is actually the real essence of our business model.
Bernard Leong: That's interesting because now you're also seeing the cryptocurrencies are trying to reinvent those rules that you have already built within your ecosystem. It's as if they have to rebuild it from scratch, which the institutional trust question comes back.
Ling Hai: That's the point. That's right.
Bernard Leong: Yeah, exactly. So thinking forward, do you see major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or even Solana now or many others to play a major role alongside the stable coins? I think we should look at them as blockchain solutions rather than the token itself. What would be your mental models in now looking at these cryptocurrencies as part of the new financial rails where Mastercard will live side by side with?
Ling Hai: I always want to assume something, and even if I'm wrong, I'm okay. So something will happen. But if it doesn't happen, then at least I assume it's gonna happen, so I'm prepared for it. So I want to assume that stable coins will become a currency. Whether this is more for B2B or P2M or remittances, we shall see. I think I have views on which use cases are more suited for stable coins. I do feel cross border or wholesale settlement. That's where you have a stronger use case.
I don't think Bitcoin is a viable currency because for one thing to be currency, you have to be stable. I mean, who's gonna pay for something today when the value is 10 tomorrow? The value could be, it's not like commodity, like gold, for example. It's an investment vehicle in my mind. You can think about this as digital gold. That's right. Or commodity. I will use it for investment. Will I use it for payment? In some rare occasions, yes. It's just like in time of war, people use gold to buy things when money is not available. But in normal times, I think it doesn't fit my definition of a currency. So stablecoins probably yes. Less so on the other crypto.
Bernard Leong: Your question is about mental models? How are you gonna think of them as part of the financial rails?
Ling Hai: The way I think about this is we can embrace stable coins as a settlement currency to bring them onto our rail. I also believe there will be interoperability that's needed. I just explained to you this whole on ramp, off ramp. Off ramp is a great way of saying we can be the bridge between the DeFi world and the real world, especially physical merchants. There will still be many physical merchants. They don't live in the DeFi world.
Bernard Leong: They want something that just automatically converts whatever comes from crypto into the real world.
Ling Hai: That's right. I think that's where we can play a huge role. So at the end of the day, if I would cite a mentor of mine who said, you need to be at the table because if you're not at the table, you're gonna be on the table.
Bernard Leong: Wow, this is the second time. In the same day somebody told me this. Must be the same mentor. You must be on the table if you want to have a conversation. It's very true. I think from a financial inclusion standpoint, I think many emerging markets, I mean, you cover Africa, some parts of Asia Pacific are emerging as well. They do face some challenges with access to banking infrastructure. Do you see stable coins and digital wallets as a solution here, or maybe still, maybe even in a longer term, it's still a complement to the traditional rails?
Ling Hai: I think it'll be complementary. You're specifically talking about financial inclusion? Yeah. Financial inclusion. Look, Bernard, I actually think that I have a very strong view about this. Financial inclusion isn't just about having access to a digital wallet. It's not just about having access to even a bank account.
Bernard Leong: That's right.
Ling Hai: What is the real essence of financial inclusion? Oftentimes it's about access to working capital, to loans, to lending. Micro businesses require, if I'm a small business, just having a bank account with no money in it doesn't help me. Just because there's crypto, it doesn't automatically create financing. I may have crypto as a capital, but the small business still doesn't have it. So ultimately I think this is where the Mastercard network and data can come in because we know so much about transactions and behaviors we can help banks make much better underwriting decisions.
Today, the reason SMEs oftentimes won't be able to get a lot of credit or working capital loans is because banks don't know much about them. Their information is not transparent. They're not visible to the banks. Some players are trying to figure out ways to solve this. A great example in Asia is Alibaba because it's got the commerce platform. I see your behavior, I see your transactions. Now I can also think about giving you a loan. That is where I think Mastercard can really collaborate with our financial institution partners and to say, you have your data, you have your scoring model, I have more data.
I have another scoring model that can complement yours. So now together we can lend to more SMEs and therefore include them into the formal economy. That's my way of thinking about financial inclusion.
Bernard Leong: If I were to read it correctly, and maybe just to clarify, is that what you're thinking is that the stablecoin infrastructure can allow these businesses to be more scalable? Having something that they can actually on ramp, off ramp, mainly off ramp, so that they can have access to capital in order to grow their businesses. There is a way for Mastercard to do that.
Ling Hai: Sure. It's an enablement, but by itself it doesn't create a capacity for lending.
Bernard Leong: Right.
Ling Hai: But yes, it can become an enablement.
Bernard Leong: I'm pretty curious now, since we are also in the age of agent AI. Can you share any interesting stories about how AI is now being used within Mastercard? Maybe, AI is obviously being used for fraud detection, enabling to enhance consumer trust.
Ling Hai: Absolutely. So fraud, cybersecurity is a big area because I think we have to stay 2, 3, 4, 5 steps ahead of the fraudsters and the bad actors. So that's very important. But also it can be used for personalization. If you think about today how merchants are marketing to customers, it's usually one size fits all.
Think about advertising. That's the greatest example of one size fits all. Everybody sees the same thing. I think in the AI world, merchants and our customers, banks, they all have a unique capability to really personalize or customize their interactions with you and your interactions with them.
If you, for example, go into a restaurant, let's say a fast food restaurant, you see these days you're not even served by humans anymore. You have screens. You go order, but if the merchant knows I'm a vegetarian, what's the point of showing me a meat burger? So now you can actually customize the menu even on the screen to a customer. So I think AI holds tremendous promise in that field.
It's the same thing in our business as well. Not so much Mastercard directly, but for example, I have already heard a lot of our bank partners are saying they're using AI to do collections for credit card debt.
When that's enabled through a human being, the collections are much more effective. It's more, it has a better human interface, and it creates much better results.
Bernard Leong: So there was, I think, an AI being used as an avatar to collect debt in the Middle East markets. I think it's called Fatima. I think they won the EY award for innovation, and apparently Fatima does a better job than human collectors by 10%. That's actually a lot from their point of view.
Ling Hai: My belief is it's not just using avatar by itself. I do think you should use a human, but a human equipped with the AI tools. That would make the conversation even more effective. That's my view.
Bernard Leong: We discussed earlier that now we are living in the world of AI agents, and we're gonna have this situation where AI agents will be going into different commerce sites to make transactions on our behalf. How are you thinking about how to build resilient, trust-based systems for this kind of agent transactions? I've seen like a couple of deployments, but I think usually in order to get the kind of trusted scale, the Mastercard kind of scale, is not so simple.
Ling Hai: It's a great point. Today, the algorithm of our network says if you detect this transaction is done not by a human being, by a bot, decline. Tomorrow, that algorithm isn't gonna work anymore because agents will be making choices and also making payments. So still very early days for us. We're closely working with all the ecosystem players. We are basically the orchestrator. We're in the middle of the network.
That's right. We're working with all the ecosystem players to now set new rules and standards in terms of agent pay. In terms of what the data exchange should look like. How do we close the feedback loop? If there's a dispute, what does the chargeback look like? So there's a whole set of new rules and methods that we have to revisit and redesign.
So that's very important. Cybersecurity continues to be important. In the agent world, it's even worse. It's gonna be even more complicated. But there's some no regret moves we can make today that will serve today, but also will serve the agent commerce world. That is things like tokenization. You don't ever want to have your real credentials just flow out there. You want to have a token. Stronger authentication. Like today it's passkey. Probably tomorrow there'll be something else. But how we bind the biometrics with a device to do stronger authentication, that's gonna be relevant for the agent commerce world as well. Click to pay. One click, you consummate a transaction that's both safe and easy. That's another thing. So those are the things we continue to drive with our customers in the ecosystem because we feel those are no regret moves.
Bernard Leong: I totally agree. Like for example, I think people don't appreciate when you do a click to pay, there's actually multiple things are happening in the background that give you the seamless payment experience. But yet there are a lot of things in the background like making sure all the checks are correct, the payment passes through and it gets to the merchant. All these things, I think people don't appreciate the amount of work that's being done. There's a lot of work. So what is the one question that you wish more people would ask you about Mastercard and everything in your region, but they don't?
Ling Hai: I think I maybe have already said it. That is the question is, do we issue cards? We're not a card company actually at all. That's not what we do. We are a technology company that processes transactions and payments. This actually speaks to the fact why we are such a versatile and flexible network. We do what we do today, but as the world changes, we are able to adapt and embrace the future.
This is about crypto we just talked about. Agent commerce. We can embrace that as well. So the versatility of the Mastercard network is probably something that people don't appreciate. I will give you another great example. Real time payment. In South Africa we launched our real time payment network instance on soil in South Africa, so our network not only tomorrow will not only support card payments. It actually supports real-time payments as well. Today that is realized in South Africa. Tomorrow it's gonna be around the world. So the versatility of the network is probably one thing I would say.
Bernard Leong: So my traditional closing question, what does great look like for Mastercard across the premier region over the next few years in light of AI and digital currency developments?
Ling Hai: We continue to be that trusted network that stands in the middle of all transactions. We continue to power economies and drive digital e-commerce. Our CEO actually said this, we want to be the operating system of commerce and the digital economy. I think that probably is a good way to summarize what success looks like.
Bernard Leong: Oh, that's a very good way to close. So, Hai, many thanks for coming on the show. I always have two very quick closing questions. The first one is, any recommendations you can share which have inspired your life recently?
Ling Hai: I read this book a while back and I just read it again, a book called Thinking Fast and Slow by the late Daniel Kahneman. It's a great book. I mean, for me as a leader in the company, it's just really helpful to understand how the cognitive decisioning process works in different people's heads.
Bernard Leong: Yes. System one and two thinking.
Ling Hai: What kind of biases we hold. It's a great way to understand behavior and thinking. So I highly recommend it. But also this man was just brilliant. It is a pity to lose such a brilliant person.
Bernard Leong: So how can my audience find you and follow Mastercard's developments?
Ling Hai: I think probably my LinkedIn is the best platform. I'll link to you after this. Also, Mastercard has our own websites. There's a lot of information about us, about me. But LinkedIn is probably the best place. You can definitely find us everywhere from YouTube to Spotify and across LinkedIn as well.
Bernard Leong: Of course, follow us across all social media platforms. Hai, many thanks for coming on the show and I look forward to speaking to you in the future.
Ling Hai: No, thank you. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.
Podcast Information: Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by G. Thomas Craig (@gthomascraig, LinkedIn). Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast.
