MasterCard profits up six per cent in Q4
MasterCard, the world’s second largest payments processor, saw revenues decline but profits increase during the final quarter of last year.
Net income rose by 4.8 per cent to $933m, compared to $890m 12 months ago. Revenue fell slightly short of analysts’ estimates of $2.79bn, coming in at $2.76bn.
Quarterly profits for the three months to December were six per cent up on the same period in the previous year.
MasterCard deals with a total of 150 currencies across its systems. The company told investors that cross-border volumes had increased by 13 per cent in Q4, driven by users making payments on their cards from outside of their home country.
MasterCard’s shares have increased in value by 22 per cent in 2016, reaching an all time intraday high of $111.07 on January 25th.
The New York based firm processes around 65,000 transactions every minute, with $1.2 trillion in gross dollar volumes processed in the fourth quarter of 2016. The United States was the largest market for MasterCard last year, accounting for one third of gross dollar volumes.
Visa Inc is the world’s largest payments processor and will report its own results on Thursday.