MasterCard has posted its fiscal results for the third quarter, and they are pretty much what you’d expect for one of the world’s largest financial services institutions. The company raked in $2.5 billion in revenues, resulting in a net income of $977 million.
That brings the year-to-date totals to $7.2 billion in revenue and $2.9 billion in net income, as of September 30th. Given the company’s size and its operational scope, a number of factors contributed to these earnings; but one important recent trend is the company widening embrace of digital transactions; indeed, the company reports that for Q3, the number of processed transactions is up 12 percent, reaching 12.3 billion. In a press release, MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga explained, “As the world becomes more digitally driven, our our innovations and investments in things such as MasterPass, EMV and biometrics are helping to redefine the way people shop and pay with convenience and security.”
MasterCard has shown excitement about the American financial industry’s shift to EMV chip card technology, which should help to cut down credit card fraud; and the company has been eager to experiment with the kinds of mobile payment technologies often associated with the EMV readers spreading across merchants’ POS terminals. And while biometric payment technologies are only nascent in the company’s revenue portfolio, MasterCard has proven to be an early adopter of the technology, seeing its advantages in further reducing fraud and helping to enable more convenient payments.
Given its prominence in the industry, MasterCard’s enthusiasm for digital payment technologies and biometric authentication could prove contagious, especially given the company’s promotion of such technologies at this week’s Money 20/20 conference.
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