We have had commitments from banks in other countries, including Germany, Italy, recently the Allied Irish Banks in Ireland made a commitment to move their domestically branded and ATM only cards to Maestro.

The regulatory positions are ones that are going to have to be solidified in order to give all the businesses a platform on which they can evaluate and judge the investment decisions they have to make.

Moshe Katri (Cowen & Co.): Can we expect further pricing adjustments?

Chris A. McWilton: We are always looking at ways to provide value to our customers and do it in a way where they think they are growing their business and becoming more profitable as a result of the services and products we are providing.

We have a global committee that figures out on a regular basis whether we have optimized pricing. We have a very extensive product development group which is trying to come up with new ways to help customers and work with customers on their opportunities.

Moshe Katri (Cowen & Co.): What are the opportunities in the prepaid card business and how well are you positioned in that area?

Robert W. Selander: This is something that several of our customers view as very important and we bring the same strengths from the standpoint of the global acceptance of the brand.

Through MasterCard advisors, we do advisory work in support of customers’ prepaid initiatives. We do have a platform that supports those products for those institutions that may not be running their own platform. We were able to participate most recently with the fires here in California, getting $25,000 worth of prepaid cards through one of our customers out to the Red Cross so that they could fuel their vehicles as they responded to those wildfires.

Moshe Katri (Cowen & Co.): On an ongoing basis, are we going to see a more significant contribution from that area financially?

Robert W. Selander: It is embedded in the other elements of our business, so we get to do the authorization, clearing and settlement, and the processing fees, depending on where these products are being utilized. If they are on our platform or, as a result of our advisory work, there are other fees to be realized.

Christopher Brendler (Stifel Nicolaus): On your domestic volumes, do you see any slowdown in spending patterns?

Robert W. Selander: Purchase volume growth was 9.4% and that is about six percentage points or so above the rate for consumer spending or retail sales broadly in the economy. That is in part a result of the success of electronic and card-based payments and in part our cordial relations with our customers.

The spending pulse report shows slowing consumer and retail level spending and our spending volumes tracking down, although not as low as those growth rates. Looking forward, we have cautious optimism in terms of the control of inflation and the way the federal authorities is going to behave in ensuring that the economy weathers some of the challenges coming out of the sub-prime market.
Christopher Brendler (Stifel Nicolaus): Any debit conversion updates?

Robert W. Selander: Allied Irish Banks recently made a commitment with regard to moving their domestically branded and ATM only cards to Maestro, there is also the Swiss Bank’s movement and our work with Banc of America on the affinity debit programs.

Christopher Brendler (Stifel Nicolaus): Are any of the price increases that you mentioned related to rebates and incentives?

Chris A. McWilton: From a rebate and incentive perspective, you are going to see the growth moderating a bit. As the base moves up, you are going to have to have a bigger rebate and incentive against a program so we are seeing slowdown in the assessment rebates and incentives.

There are cases where, based upon a specific customer situation, if we put a pricing increase in place, we might need to accommodate that for some contractual issue we might have, or a customer relationship issue.

Howard Shapiro (Fox-Pitt Kelton): How does your assessment of changing economic growth or spending patterns, influence allocation of marketing spend going forward?

Robert W. Selander: In advertising and marketing, we go through a modeling process which enables us to allocate funds on a country level during our budget process. One of the indicators that we use is an underlying assumption in terms of what is going to go on with the economy and growth in that market.

We put enough money into a market so that we can meet the customers’ expectations where we have agreements with customers to do certain things, but also to the extent that there’s a threshold of spending that may be required in order to have adequate impact to achieve a brand awareness objective.

Kenneth A. Posner (Morgan Stanley): Can you compare and contrast the net assessment yields in the U.S. versus overseas?