David E. Mangum
Analyst · JPMorgan
Yes, and obviously, a fair question is that was one of the real challenges for the quarter. We do have new distribution partners who have come online. It's certainly not enough volume to offset what we saw in Q4, but it should build nicely over the course of '14. Maybe as important and more important will be new partners we bring over the course '14. And maybe when I'm finished with this part of the answer, I'll let Paul add a little more color to that piece. But really what we saw in Q4 in Asia was some sequential deceleration. Deceleration, to make sure I'm clear on that, in e-commerce, in really a year-over-year decline that was obviously, unexpected. We saw weakness in general retail as well. That was headlined by a year-over-year decline in one of our larger customers in the region, and a little bit of weakness in DCC and IPP, where we had expected some growth in the installment payment plan products. I think when I think about going into '14 then, a couple of things really go in our favor, quite honestly the most straightforward one is the comparables are much easier. We have seen relatively stable underlying metrics as we exit the year, so transaction growth, for example, across the region. Relatively stable tickets and solid growth in transactions and volume in general should set us up for the kind of growth we're talking about, and we're not expecting anything other than solid but not spectacular growth across these same product lines I was discussing earlier, retail, e-commerce, DCC, IPP. And then we'll do a little bit of targeted repricing in markets that can support that over the course of the year. So all in, I think if you look at the way we exit '14, you're right, there's not a lot of great things going on in the Q4 of '14, but as we enter -- or Q4 of '13, excuse me, as we enter '14, looking for solid but not spectacular performance, and I think we're poised to deliver that over the course of the year.