Mastercard operates a global payments network that connects consumers, merchants, and financial institutions to enable electronic payments. Mastercard does not issue cards, extend credit, or set interest rates — it provides the infrastructure that allows card transactions to be authorized, cleared, and settled. Mastercard's direct customers are roughly 27,000 bank and credit union partners globally that issue Mastercard-branded cards and sign up merchants to accept them. As of year-end 2025, approximately 3.7B Mastercard and Maestro-branded cards were in circulation, accepted at hundreds of millions of locations across more than 220 countries. Mastercard reports revenue in two segments: Payment Network (roughly two-thirds of revenue), which earns fees as a percentage of gross dollar volume and per-transaction switching fees; and Value-Added Services and Solutions (roughly one-third, growing faster), which includes fraud prevention, data analytics, digital authentication, and open finance offerings sold to financial institutions, merchants, and governments. Key growth drivers include the secular shift from cash to digital payments (roughly $11T in global cash and check flows remain unconverted), cross-border transactions (which carry higher fees), and expanding value-added services into a serviceable market Mastercard estimates at $165B. Mastercard also targets B2B payments and money movement through commercial card products and its Mastercard Move disbursements platform. The two businesses reinforce each other: more payment volume generates more data, which powers better services, which in turn attract more payment volume.