Mastercard Incorporated

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the MasterCard third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one in your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Warren Nishaw, head of investor relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jamaria. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our third quarter 2021 earnings call. With me today are Michael Meebok, our Chief Executive Officer, and Sachin Mehra, our Chief Financial Officer. Following comments from Michael and Sachin, the operator will announce your opportunity to get into the queue for the Q&A session. It's only then that the queue will open for questions. You can access our earnings release, supplemental performance data, and the slide deck that accompanied this call in the investor relations section of our website, MasterCard.com. Additionally, the release was furnished with the SEC earlier this morning. Our comments today regarding our financial results will be on a non-GAAP currency neutral basis unless otherwise noted. Both the release and the slide deck include reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to their GAAP reported amounts. Finally, as set forth in more detail in our earnings release, I would like to remind everyone that today's call will include forward-looking statements regarding MasterCard's future performance. Actual performance could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Information about the factors that could affect future performance are summarized at the end of our earnings release and in our recent SEC filings. A replay of this call will be posted on our website for 30 days. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Michael Meebach.

Thank you, Warren. Good morning, everyone. So let me start by giving you the highlights of the quarter. Strong revenue and earnings growth continued, with net revenue up 29% and EPS up 48% versus a year ago. as always on a non-GAAP currency neutral basis. On the same basis, quarter three net revenues are now 11% above pre-COVID levels in 2019. We've seen continued strength in domestic spending, and overall cross-border volumes are now back at 2019 levels, though there still remain significant growth in cross-border travel. We're continuing to execute against our strategic priorities with good progress on the product and deal fronts this quarter, and we're excited about our acquisition of CypherTrace in the crypto services area and our planned acquisition of AYA in open banking. So those are the highlights. Looking at the broader economy, domestic spending levels continue to improve, even though economies are facing supply chain constraints, rising energy prices, and some other inflationary pressures. According to our quarter three spending pulse report, which is based on all payment types, including cash and check,