MasterCard announces double digit Q4 growth in Asia/Pacific

APMEA region showed strong 20.3 percent rise in gross dollar volume and 18.6 percent in purchase volume.

The Asia/Pacific, Middle East & Africa (APMEA) region also witnessed double-digit growth in the purchase transactions (19.4 percent), cash transactions (31.9 percent) and cards issued (11.2 percent) for the quarter ending 31 December 2009 versus the same period in 2008.

As of 31 December 2009, 268 million MasterCard cards (excluding Maestro® and Cirrus) had been issued by MasterCard customer financial institutions in APMEA. Cardholders in the region made 1,130 million purchase transactions in the fourth quarter of 2009 and cardholders could use their MasterCard cards at 29.9 million acceptance locations worldwide.

For the quarter ending 31 December 2009, the Maestro® brand mark appeared on 207 million cards in APMEA. Consumers can now make debit point of sale purchases with their Maestro cards at 1 million merchant locations in APMEA.

Meanwhile, for the year ending 31 December 2009, the APMEA region saw growth in gross dollar volume (17.9 percent), purchase volume (16.6 percent), purchase transactions (19.1 percent) and cash transactions (29.5 percent) versus figures in 2008.