MasterCard posts healthy performance in Asia-Pacific

MANILA, Philippines - MasterCard has announced third quarter 2010 results for the Asia/Pacific, Middle East & Africa (APMEA) region. For the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2010, the region registered growth in gross dollar volume (17.5 percent), purchase volume (15.7 percent), purchase transactions (14.8 percent), cash transactions (28.3 percent) and cards issued (10.2 percent) versus the same period in 2009.

As of Sept. 30, 2010, 289 million MasterCard cards (excluding Maestro and Cirrus) had been issued by MasterCard customer financial institutions across APMEA. Cardholders in the region made 1,239 million purchase transactions in the third quarter of 2010 and could use their MasterCard cards at 30.9 million acceptance locations worldwide.

As at the end of the third quarter, the Maestro® brand mark now appears on 209 million cards in APMEA. Consumers can now make debit point of sale purchases with their MasterCard- or Maestro-branded cards at 1.5 million merchant locations in the APMEA region.

“Our growth momentum has continued into the third quarter. This healthy growth validates our strategy to provide a broad suite of products and services which cater to the needs of our customer banks, merchants and cardholders,” said Vicky Bindra, president, Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa, MasterCard Worldwide. “As MasterCard continues to wage the war on cash, we will work closely with our customers to leverage new technologies and innovative payment methods to enable safe, easy and convenient ways to pay for cardholders.”