The news: Mastercard reported robust Q4 2025 earnings with $8.81 billion in net revenues, up 18% YoY, per its earnings release.

This exceeded FactSet analysts’ expectations of $8.77 billion, per Morningstar. 

Mastercard also announced that it would cull 4% of its global workforce following a strategic review of its business.

How cardholders fared: Personal and business cardholding spending growth was dampened compared with the previous year.

• Mastercard’s worldwide credit and charge card purchase volume grew 8.2% YoY, down from 10.5% a year ago. 
• In the US, purchase volume growth dropped only to 6.6% in Q4 2025—the rest of Mastercard’s worldwide volume growth fell from 10.9% in 2024 to 9.1%. 
• Mastercard’s worldwide debit and prepaid programs grew 9.5% YoY over the quarter, down from 15.6% last year.
• American debit and prepaid cardholder purchase volume decelerated the most, slipping from 10.8% in Q4 2024 to 2.3% as Capital One migrated its debit portfolio onto the Discover network.

Overall, payment network net revenues rose 12%. But value-added services and solution net revenue jumped even more at 26%, signalling Mastercard’s increasing presence in roles outside of facilitating payments directly, like consulting, security, and marketing insights.

Inside the earnings call: CEO Michael Miebach noted that Mastercard was navigating an evolving payments landscape.

• Miebach confirmed that as at Q4 2025, Mastercard tokenized 40% of all its transactions. This sets the network up to facilitate a faster flow of payments.  
• After the launch of Mastercard Agent Suite, Miebach expects to announce partnerships with FIS, WPP, and Comcast to inject AI agent assistance for internal operations and consumer-facing projects.

Critically, Miebach said that Capital One renewed its credit portfolio agreement with Mastercard for its credit products—sort of. Mastercard “will be the network for a large portion of newly acquired credit accounts,” slowing the inevitable migration over to the Discover network.

Implications for payment providers: Mastercard’s hold on the Capital One credit portfolio is tenuous. The partial renewal shows the caution issuers have to take to ensure a seamless transition as more cards roll over to Discover.

However, once Capital One ramps up Discover’s international acceptance and other infrastructure, the issuer will likely end its credit program from Mastercard—signalling vulnerabilities to come for the network.