00:00Thank you. It's great to be here. Welcome. We're just thrilled you're all here. I'm going to ask a quick question off script. How many of you care about small and medium businesses? Good answer. No, thank you. But no, that's really why we're all here together today.
00:18And, you know, it's funny. A lot of people think about MasterCard as a card company. Now, probably less of you that are in this room, but at dinner parties, you know, my daughter, mom, can you help fix my credit card? That's really not what we are. MasterCard is actually a technology company.
00:36And what we do every day is power the global payment system. We serve banks. We serve fintechs. We serve merchants, consumers, processors. A couple numbers that will kind of blow your mind. They've blown mine. And I've been at the company for nine years.
00:54We process 150 billion transactions a year at 100 million locations. And in 2024 alone, we move $9 trillion in money. So a lot of you are probably wondering why do small businesses, why is that important to MasterCard? And I've been in the small business arena pretty much my whole career.
01:19And here's why. There's 34.8 million small businesses in the U.S. How many of you knew that they employ over 50% of the people in the United States? They really drive over 50% of the GDP. And they are growing at an astronomical rate with over 6 million that formed last year.
01:45And so we believe that since they are part of the communities, many of you probably saw during COVID that if they were closed, the community was closed.
01:56And today we're going to be talking a lot about digital and why digital is important to small and medium businesses. And that is why it is so critical that we partner with all of you.
02:07San Francisco, great place to be. We have a great office here. But many of you are in the fintech and the technology space. And you make it possible for small businesses to grow.
02:20A small business that accepts digital payments has 30% more sales, has significantly more revenue. But the other key thing to worry about is cyber.
02:31A lot of people don't understand. A lot of people don't understand. And we'll be talking about this a bit. But if you take a look at cyber attacks, over 50% of all cyber attacks happen to small business today.
02:44And that is why we've invested $7 billion in cyber technologies. And we've prevented about $30 billion in fraud.
02:54And if you think about it, the average cost of a ransomware attack is between $20,000 and $500,000 for a small business.
03:03So if you're a small business that does $250,000 in revenue, one cyber attack can wipe you out.
03:10So what gives me hope? There's a lot of things that small businesses have been up against in terms of the economy, in terms of cyber, in terms of the fact that they don't have a lot of resources.
03:24The top things they tell us is we need access to capital. We need to be kept safe and secure.
03:30And we need the ecosystem to enable us with digital technology.
03:35But we're very optimistic because small businesses are resilient.
03:40They came into business not to do the stuff that they don't like to do, like bills and invoices.
03:47They came in because of a passion.
03:50And really, that is why we're so optimistic, because we have the capability to put the wind at the back of our customers like you in order to enable your customers, the small businesses, to be better.
04:03And remember, this isn't just one of us. This is really all of us.
04:07And I think all of us can really share, not just optimism, but really share the prosperity that we can put small businesses in a position to obtain so that they can grow themselves, their families, their employees' families, as well as their communities.
04:24And I want to personally thank Bloomberg for arranging this event.
04:28And, man, we've got a really cool audience. You guys should talk to each other. There's some pretty cool people here.
04:33But we're super excited to be a part of it.
04:36You're going to have a really great evening and look forward to a lot of conversation.
04:40I want to thank you in advance for your attendance.
04:42But mostly I want to thank you about caring about small and medium business.
Be the first to comment