MasterCard posted a 11.4% GDV growth in Q4

While the consumer credit is getting more and more burdensome to card holders with the credit card companies increasing the interest rates MasterCard posted its operating results for the fourth quarter and full-year 2008 reporting a growth in both credit and debit (offline and PIN-based) programs in the Latin America and Caribbean region.

635 million purchase and cash transactions were made in the fourth quarter 2008 by cardholders in the region on their MasterCard-branded cards (excluding Cirrus® and Maestro®) which generated dollar volume (GDV) of US $44 billion, an increase of 11.4% on a local currency basis against the same period in the previous year. Purchase volume in the fourth quarter of 2008 increased 13.3% on a local currency basis to US $24 billion.

On a year basis during 2008 MasterCard®-branded cards (excluding Cirrus® and Maestro®) were used for 2.35 billion purchase and cash transactions thus a gross dollar volume (GDV) of US $184 billion, up 16.1% on local currency as compared to 2007. Additionally, Purchase Volume reached US $96 billion in 2008, increasing 18.6%, on a local currency basis as compared to 2007.