MANILA, Philippines - MasterCard Inc. recently announced solid second quarter 2009 results for the Asia/Pacific, Middle East & Africa (APMEA) region. For the quarter ending June 30, 2009, the region witnessed growth in gross dollar volume (17.4 percent), purchase volume (16.3 percent), purchase transactions (19.7 percent), cash transactions (29.3 percent) and cards issued (14.3 percent) versus the same period in 2008.
As of the second quarter of this year, 256 million MasterCard cards (excluding Maestro and Cirrus) had been issued by MasterCard customer financial institutions across APMEA. Cardholders in the region made 1,010 million purchase transactions in the second quarter of 2009 and could use their MasterCard cards at 29.4 million acceptance locations worldwide.
“Despite the difficult economic environment, we are pleased with our APMEA region’s second quarter results,” said Vicky Bindra, president, Asia/Pacific, Middle East & Africa, MasterCard Worldwide. “As the economic downturn continues to play out, our focus on working with bank customers and merchant partners to address difficult business issues has become even more important.”
For the quarter ending June 30, 2009, the Maestro brand mark appeared on 199 million cards in APMEA. Consumers can now make debit point of sale purchases with their Maestro cards at 957,000 merchant locations in APMEA.
In addition to the performance highlights, MasterCard in the APMEA region also reported a number of significant achievements for the second quarter.