Higher Transaction Volumes Help Boost MasterCard’s Quarterly Profit by 21%

Boosted by higher transaction volumes both in the United States and abroad, MasterCard Inc. on Friday reported a 21% increase, adjusted for foreign-currency effects, in net income for 2014’s fourth quarter. The No. 2 payment network posted an $801 million profit versus $684 million a year earlier on net revenues of $2.42 billion, up 17% adjusted for currency effects and excluding a special item, from $2.13 billion at the end of 2013.

MasterCard’s credit and debit purchase volumes managed to make healthy gains in the mature U.S. market. In credit, purchase volumes rose 8% to $160 billion against $148 billion in 2013’s fourth quarter, on 1.78 billion transactions, up 6% from 1.68 billion.

In debit, MasterCard reported U.S. charge volume of $138 billion, up 8.5% from $127 billion a year earlier. The debit purchase transaction count totaled 3.52 billion, up 8% from the prior-year quarter’s 3.26 billion.

MasterCard’s worldwide credit and debit purchase volume for the quarter came in at $858 billion, up 12% on a local-currency basis from $805 billion a year earlier. Purchase transactions totaled 13.9 billion versus 12.2 billion, up 14%.

Total processed transactions increased to 11.6 billion, up 11.5% from 10.4 billion in 2013’s last quarter. MasterCard took an $87 million restructuring charge in the fourth quarter to “to better position ourselves for the future, such as realigning some roles within the company’s business groups, redeploying resources geographically and consolidating all processing assets under one organization,” the company said in a statement.

MasterCard reported Friday that its MasterPass online-shopping service added a number of new acceptors, including Neiman Marcus, Office Depot, and the American Red Cross for donations. The service is now accepted in 16 countries.