“At this point, on a dollar basis, most of our spending categories have fully recovered. So I would expect more stable growth rates this year across spending categories with the exception that year-over-year growth rates for T&E spending will likely be elevated in Q1 as we lap the impact of Omicron from the prior year.”

In context

“inue though their steady recovery this quarter with overall billings now 11% below pre-pandemic levels. And lastly, you see our highest growth in international card services as this segment is now in a steep recovery mode given it started its pandemic recovery later than other segments. Spending from international consumer and international SME and large corporate customers grew 23% and 32% year-over-year respectively in Q4. Across all customer types, T&E spending momentum remained particularly strong in the fourth quarter. While we also saw a nice sequential growth in the amount of goods and services spending versus last quarter, so there were a few pockets that slowed, such as the digital advertising spend in SME that I mentioned earlier. So what do all of these takeaways mean for 2023? At this point, on a dollar basis, most of our spending categories have fully recovered. So I would expect more stable growth rates this year across spending categories with the exception that year-over-year growth rates for T&E spending will likely be elevated in Q1 as we lap the impact of Omicron from the prior year. Importantly, all of the things that Steve just talked about that make up the strategy underlying our growth plan have created a foundation for sustainable growth rates greater than what we were seeing pre-pandemic. Now moving on to loans and Card Member receivables on Slide 8, we saw year-over-year growth of 24% in our loan balances as well as good sequential growth. This loan growth is now exceeding our spend growth as customers steadily rebuild their balances. Given the volumes, of course, have now lapped, there is deep phase of recovery, we do expect the growth rate of our loan balances to moderate as we progress through 2023, but to remain elevated versus pre-pandemic levels. The interest-bearing portion of our loan balances, which surpassed 2019 levels last quarter also continues to”