Mastercard Grew Revenue 74% Under Miebach. His Secret: Collaboration

Mastercard's revenue climbed from $18.9 billion in 2021 to $32.8 billion in 2025, and analysts expect 2026 to top $37 billion—growth CEO Michael Miebach credits in part to a deliberate shift from competing alone to collaborating across the payments ecosystem.

Miebach, who took the top job in January 2021 after serving as chief product officer, told Mansueto Ventures CEO Stephanie Mehta he has changed how he leads. As product chief, he was, in his own words, "just doing stuff for us." As CEO, he came to appreciate that the whole payment network has to work for anyone in it to win.

"It comes down to changing [my] mindset from 'I want to compete and differentiate only' to 'I want to compete and collaborate,'" Miebach said.

What drove the diversification?

Under Miebach, Mastercard pushed well beyond consumer credit cards. The company expanded into data, insights, digital identities and stablecoins, spreading its revenue base across businesses that didn't exist at scale when he took over. That diversification tracks the revenue trajectory: $18.9 billion in 2021, $32.8 billion in 2025, and a projected $37 billion-plus in 2026, according to analyst estimates cited by Mehta.

Miebach also steered the company through the tail end of the pandemic. Mehta first interviewed him at Mastercard headquarters in June 2021, when indoor masking and social distancing were still standard—the two sat roughly six feet apart on camera.

The takeaway: Miebach's five-year run shows a card network can grow fastest when it stops acting like only a card company.

Why is agentic commerce the test case?

Miebach points to agentic commerce—AI agents finding optimal products on behalf of humans—as the clearest example of cross-industry cooperation paying off. In his assessment, the agents have proven strong at research and even at negotiating deals. Completing transactions has been harder.

Mastercard's answer: treat the agents as one more partner in the existing payments ecosystem. Traditionally, that ecosystem has four parties—the cardholder, the issuing bank, the merchant and the acquiring bank that lets the merchant accept payments. Card networks such as Mastercard and Visa connect them. Now there is a fifth participant at the table: the AI agent.

"The agents proved great at research, and even negotiating deals, but completing transactions has been more elusive," Mehta reported of Miebach's assessment.

What has Mastercard actually shipped?

Two products, with dates and names:

• Mastercard Agent Pay, launched in the U.S. in early 2025, integrates AI agents directly into the checkout process.
• Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), launched in June 2025, is designed to let agents transact with other agents continuously and at very high speeds.

Mastercard announced AP4M with 31 participants, many of them fintech companies—a roster Miebach's team highlighted to underscore how much of the initiative rests on partnership rather than solo development.

In short: the product roadmap moved from checkout integration in months, not years.

What could slow it down?

Agentic commerce is not a one-player race. Other coalitions and cooperatives are forming in the space, and competing standards are emerging— including rival payments protocols for payment authorization. Mastercard's bet is that treating agents as ecosystem partners, rather than disruptors, keeps it at the center of whichever standard wins.

The $37 billion question for 2026 is whether collaboration-first payments infrastructure turns AI agents into revenue drivers—or into another standards war the industry has to fight through first.