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#We've tried to do our best to give you the business drivers, so if you go to our operational performance package, what you will see is that European payment volumes grew two points faster than they did last quarter.
So, it was 7% growth last quarter, 9% this quarter, and that is item 2 in the operational performance data, so you can see that.
And then in the commentary we talked about cross-border been quite strong in Europe.
We are seeing a huge amount of inbound commerce into the UK, certainly helped by the pound.
Generally speaking, cross-border across Europe is quite strong.
Helped by the weakening euro, Europe is definitely a beneficiary of a lot of inbound commerce.
And then in terms of transactions, I think you heard us say in our comments that transaction growth rates in Europe were stable.
We're moving very well in terms of all the other actions you want to take in Europe, as it relates to cost and so on.
So, all in all, as <UNK> said earlier, we feel very good about both Europe's financial performance and also the accretion that we anticipated this year.
We are on track to do as well as or better than we had assumed we would this year.
We think of Visa Checkout as a platform, and it's all part of us trying to make sure that we are a leader in terms of bringing potential solutions to the market.
Because we feel very good about the fact that we now are up to $18 million users signed up for Visa Checkout.
It happens to also be a very active base of customers in terms of usage of Visa Checkout.
We are facilitating more of our issuer clients to put their products side by side embedded within Visa Checkout.
And at this stage, the pays are out there obviously doing their thing, as well.
And we are going to continue to work with them.
I think it's too early to tell how all of this is going to shake out.
My personal view is that there are too many wallets out there, consumers are not going to ultimately want to have 50 wallets, and we are not necessarily anxious to be in the wallets business, per se.
But we are anxious to be ---+ to take advantage of us being a trusted acceptance mark in the payments eco space, and want to be able to make sure that we are taking a leading position in establishing Visa as a trusted mark, and as an important partners to our issuers, in terms of them trying to establish as much volume as they can get in the digital space.
Jim, I think it's too early to tell.
We are barely two weeks into this presidency.
And while the president has been active with executive orders, I think as things start to settle down and we get into more specific policies, and his cabinet is confirmed and in place, and the legislature gets going, I think it remains to be seen what happens.
I will tell you this, that we have a world-class group of government relations people, we are already fully engaged as much as we can in the relevant conversations in Washington.
But I think there are things that relate to trade, relate to taxes, all of which could play into our business, but I honestly think it's too early to start to speculate.
And we're certainly not building anything into our plans, positively or negatively for that matter, related to any policies that might come out.
But I can assure you that we are watching it very closely.
I have talked to regulators in both very developed markets, as well as regulators in developing and emerging markets, and I think that the content and tenor of the conversations is a bit different, depending upon who you talk to.
There are governments around the world who very much are seeking a close partnership with us.
Their desirous of learning how they can be helped in moving to a much more of a cashless society.
How they can get many more of the people in their countries actually engaged in a financial system, how there could be greater financial literacy.
And so, in those particular cases, I would say that we are trying to take a very active role, and in some cases a very proactive role, in helping shape how the government thinks about what steps they ought to take.
Including, by the way, in some cases working with governments to have them be a role model by making sure that they are moving away from paper in favor of a digitized world.
So, for example, in Egypt instead of vouchers being handed out, giving people prepaid cards so that they can in fact begin to start to have an experience with plastic.
And what that does is it automatically start setting up and incenting a whole merchant network to get built out as these people have to have a place to go to be able to spend their money that is on these prepaid cards.
And merchants in this particular example, who are involved in food and beverage, for instance, want to be able to get their fair share of that volume.
So they are very quickly incented to get to a point where they can accept plastic and be signed up as a merchant.
In more developed countries, there are countries where the ship has sailed, and they've made decision on interchange, as an example.
Probably Australia and Europe being two real examples there, where I think now it's just a matter of what does that mean and how does that play out for issuers and consumers in those markets.
I think there are countries that I've talked to, where there is pressure on both sides of, say, the finance ministers in countries where some of the merchant coalitions want to see lower interchange.
But in markets, for example, where reward propositions are big on plastic, or on whatever form of payment vehicle it is, the consumer is going to get hurt in terms of those programs if interchange is lowered, because it's a two-sided market.
The economics sector, there's only so much economics and people do what they'll have to do to make sure that they stay economically viable.
So, I think there are a number of markets where, truthfully, the government is trying to stay out of it and let the free market system takeover.
And I think in general, there is markets where the regulators are taking a very active role, and in other cases, I think, a much more passive role.
Again, often quite different, depending on the specific country we are talking about.
We said it was $80 million this year, we will wait and see how things go, and give you any updates as we get towards the end of the year on future outlook.
But at this point, really, we wouldn't say anything different about the future.
We expect that we will spend the $80 million we thought we would spend this year.
Thank you.
