Mastercard beats profit estimates as CEO touts AI and stablecoins focus

By Ateev Bhandari

(Reuters) -Mastercard beat Wall Street expectations for third-quarter profit on Thursday amid sustained spending volumes as its executives emphasized the card network giant's foray into agentic commerce and stablecoins.

Consumer spending has proven resilient, while U.S. President Donald Trump's trade and immigration policies continue to fuel concerns over labor market cracks and sticky inflation.

Analysts see the payments sector as ripe for disruption as stablecoins and AI-driven agents promise to transform how consumer wallets move money.

"Players across the payments ecosystem are partnering with Mastercard and our dedicated consulting teams to ready themselves for agentic commerce," said CEO Michael Miebach on a call with analysts.

Earlier this week, PayPal shares surged after it announced a deal with OpenAI to allow purchases within ChatGPT using the payment firm's platform.

While Miebach refused to comment on Mastercard's reportedly nearing the purchase of stablecoin infrastructure firm Zerohash, he emphasized the rising influence of the dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies across payments.

"Like agentic commerce, we believe stablecoins are an attractive and growing opportunity for our network."

Designed to maintain a constant value, usually a 1:1 U.S. dollar peg, stablecoins are expected to reduce transaction settlement times and costs.

CARD EARNINGS ROUND OFF

Rival Visa also beat quarterly profit expectations earlier this week, while American Express' focus on wealthy customers helped it rake in record revenue.

Mastercard reported adjusted profit of $3.96 billion, or $4.38 per share, for the quarter ended September 30. Analysts, on average, were expecting a profit of $4.32 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Its net revenue rose 17% to $8.6 billion in the quarter. Cross-border volume, which tracks spending on cards outside their issuing country, jumped 15% on a local currency basis.

Shares of the company were up marginally.

(Reporting by Ateev Bhandari in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva, Shinjini Ganguli and Alan Barona)

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