Mastercard Records Regional Growth In Second Quarter

August 04, 2009 18:24 PM

Mastercard Records Regional Growth In Second Quarter

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 4 (Bernama) -- MasterCard Incorporated managed to record growth for the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa region for its second quarter ended 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, it said.

"Despite the difficult economic environment, we are pleased with our region's second-quarter results," said Vicky Bindra, president, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, MasterCard Worldwide, in a statement on Tuesday.

"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," she said.

As of June 30, 2009, 256 million MasterCard cards (excluding Maestro and Cirrus) had been issued by MasterCard customer financial institutions across the region, the company said.

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, it said.

For the second quarter, the Maestro brand mark appeared on 199 million cards in the region, MasterCard said.

Consumers can now make debit point of sale purchases with their Maestro cards at 957,000 merchant locations, it added.

-- BERNAMA