Role as the world's largest retail payment network with a leading and hard-to-challenge position in many countries Robust profitability and rising earnings as a beneficiary of global economic growth and consumers' increasing use of electronic payments Material legal and regulatory risks that can challenge the oligopolistic nature of the retail electronic payment network industry in many countries Long-term threat that technological innovation from competitors ultimately could eat into market share High operational risk relating to processing billions of transactions annually Minimal financial risk, with leverage below 1.5x and funds from operations (FFO) to debt well above 60% Very strong profitability and cash flow generation Large unsecured exposures to financial institutions stemming from its promise to stand behind all transactions processed
