Cards are going to go away, says Citigroup CEO Mike Corbat

It’s a testament to his pragmatism, but Michael Corbat, the chief executive of Citigroup, the world’s biggest issuer of credit cards, is quite happy to concede that the popular financial product is doomed to extinction.

“We know, at some point, cards are going to go away”, Corbat says in an exclusive interview with The Australian Financial Review, “and it’s just going to be digital wallet, digital payments.”

This is why Citi is putting a major emphasis on “fintech” – from cutting-edge banking apps for mobile phones through to blockchain, artificial intelligence and robotics, to forging partnership with big players such as Alipay, Amazon and WeChat – to make sure that that it continues to occupy a dominant position in the global payments system.

“It’s central to who we are. The piece of plastic is going away, and so how do we make sure that we embed ourselves in whatever the wallet of the future is?” he says.

Of course, Corbat has learnt the hard way just how costly it can be when bankers become overly complacent. A Citi lifer – he started at Salomon Brothers, which was taken over by Travelers in 1998, shortly before the merger with Citicorp that created the financial services giant – he was tasked with running the “bad bank” created in the aftermath of the financial crisis, and overseeing the disposal of some $US800 billion ($1.05 trillion) in non-core assets.

Since taking the helm of Citi in 2012, Corbat has reoriented Citi’s global operations, whittling its consumer banking operations down from 50 countries, back to 19 (including Australia), and emphasising three key markets: Asia, Mexico and the United States.

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Source: Cards are going to go away, says Citigroup CEO Mike Corbat | afr.com