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MasterCard International Reports Strong Growth In 2002 As Gross Dollar Volume Reaches US$1.14 Trillion
CEO Says 2002 Was “An Extraordinary Year For MasterCard”
Purchase, NY, February 26, 2003 - MasterCard International today announced strong performance results for the fourth quarter and full-year 2002, demonstrating continued growth across all regions and in all key measures of success in the payments industry. It was a year in which MasterCard achieved several significant milestones. For the first time in our history, we became the leading credit card brand in the United States, based on the number of cards issued, and we reorganized into a unified, shareholder-owned global payments company that is already providing significant benefits to our customers.
Robert W. Selander, MasterCard President and CEO, said “2002 was, simply, an extraordinary year for MasterCard. We continued to attain exceptional growth against a backdrop of generally weak worldwide economic activity. At the same time, we achieved a number of significant milestones in the strategy that drives our business: focusing on customers, strengthening our core services, and differentiating ourselves through customized services and solutions.”
“Through this customer-centric approach to growing our business, we made significant progress with our customers, both in terms of helping them with their goals of improving growth and profitability, and in terms of the volume of business they now do with MasterCard,” he said. “Our 2002 performance clearly demonstrates that more and more, our financial institution customers, and their cardholders, are choosing MasterCard as their payment brand.”
“With the great majority of the world's payments still made with cash or checks, the potential for growth is enormous, and we think we're in the best position in our history to seize that opportunity as we help our customers around the world grow their businesses more profitably,” Selander said.
Performance highlights for 2002 include:
• Cardholders across the globe used MasterCard-branded cards (excluding Maestro™ and Cirrus®) for about 13.6 billion transactions, generating gross dollar volume (GDV) of US$1.14 trillion, an increase of 15.2% over 2001;
• At year-end, MasterCard's 25,000 member financial institutions around the world had issued more than 590 million MasterCard-branded cards, a 13.6% increase over 2001;
• MasterCard cardholders were also able to use their cards at over 30 million acceptance locations around the globe, a 25.6% increase over year-end 2001. The number of acceptance locations has been growing as traditional merchants and merchants in new categories like fast food restaurants, healthcare providers and virtual merchants discover the convenience and benefits of MasterCard acceptance;
• Maestro, MasterCard's online, PIN-based global debit brand, continued to grow in 2002, with the Maestro brand mark now appearing on 505.2 million cards worldwide, a 16.6% increase over year-end 2001. Maestro is accepted for purchases at more than 7.3 million merchant terminals in 93 countries and territories, and at 821,766 MasterCard/Maestro/Cirrus ATMs around the world;
• As a global leader in smart cards, we had more than 127 million MasterCard®-, Maestro-, Mondex®-branded smart cards issued worldwide by year-end 2002, and more than half of them carry value-added applications like loyalty, digital ID, e-ticketing, e-coupons or personal data storage.
MasterCard's strong growth in 2002 was fueled by growth in both credit and debit programs. GDV for worldwide credit and charge programs grew 14.2% to US$946.4 billion, and GDV for offline debit programs rose 20.1% to US$195.1 billion.
For the fourth quarter of 2002, global GDV rose 12.2% to US$308.9 billion, marking the 15th consecutive quarter of double-digit GDV growth. GDV includes both purchase and cash volume. Fourth quarter transactions increased by 13.2% in 2002 to 3.7 billion.
Significant Milestones Achieved
Mr. Selander said that a key milestone achieved in 2002 was the completion of the merger with Europay International to form a unified, shareholder-owned, global payments company that is delivering significant benefits to customers around the globe through increased strategic flexibility, better customer responsiveness and shorter time-to-market for innovative products and services. MasterCard also completed its conversion from a membership association to a private share corporation as part of the merger with Europay, which is now MasterCard's Europe region.
“Equally important,” he said, “we have combined Europay's strength in mobile commerce, smart cards and debit cards with MasterCard's leadership in customer relationship management, brand marketing and processing technology. In connection with the merger, we launched two Centers of Excellence in Waterloo, Belgium, one for debit and one for chip and mobile commerce. These new
Centers are working together with our e-commerce and eB2B Center of Excellence in Purchase, New York, and are helping to further leverage our strengths in these areas.”
MasterCard has also achieved a wide range of significant business milestones:
• 2002 marked the five-year anniversary of our award-winning “Priceless™” campaign. Our integrated marketing and promotional programs, led by “Priceless,” are now seen in 96 countries and in 45 languages, and continue to build strong brand awareness around the world;
• We were an official sponsor of the 2002 FIFA World Cup™ in Japan and Korea. The sponsorship provided the opportunity for MasterCard member financial institutions worldwide to build their business by association with the FIFA World Cup. More than 2,300 members leveraged the event, and the number of World Cup-related affinity cards issued rose 25% compared with the 1998 games in France;
• MasterCard delivered its new clearing system, a major component of its System Enhancement Strategy. MasterCard's goal in rewriting its processing platform was to provide its customers with the opportunity to realize significant operational efficiencies, develop new products and services, create new revenue streams, and enhance profitability. The platform employs advanced technology to enhance MasterCard's transaction processing operations – authorization, clearing, settlement, and file transfer;
• In the United States, we initiated a trial of PayPass™, an innovative new “contactless” card payment program that provides consumers with a simpler way to pay. With MasterCard PayPass, consumers simply tap or wave their payment card by a specially equipped merchant terminal that then transmits payment details wirelessly, eliminating the need to swipe the card through a reader. MasterCard is currently working with leading financial institutions – Chase, Citibank and MBNA – to audition MasterCard PayPass with numerous merchants in the Orlando, Florida area;
• We unveiled a new global e-commerce security solution for protecting confidential cardholder data over the Internet. The new service, known as MasterCard® SecureCode™, addresses two of the most pressing issues in e-commerce today: cardholder concerns about the safety of online shopping, and Internet merchants' need for an enhanced payment guarantee;
• We continued to work aggressively in public sector markets in 2002. MasterCard Corporate Payment Solutions are now being used by public sector customers in key countries such as, the United States, Canada, France, Australia, Taiwan, Chile, Brazil, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and South Africa.
Maestro
Maestro, MasterCard's leading online debit program, grew substantially during the year as the result of several major countries migrating their local debit programs to Maestro. Approximately 35 million Redeshop and Caixa cards are being converted in Brazil and 21 million Switch cards are being converted in the United Kingdom. The Ziraat Bank of Turkey is in the process of converting five million of its private label debit cards to Maestro, increasing the number of Maestro cards in Turkey by 30% to more than 16 million. In India, a number of financial institutions including the Bank of Punjab, Central Bank of India and the State Bank of India, will be issuing Maestro exclusively.
“MasterCard's leadership in debit has been significantly strengthened with the Europay integration,” said Ann Camarillo, MasterCard's chief debit officer. “We've created a powerful force around debit which is why more and more of our customers around the world are migrating their local debit programs to Maestro. Banks and consumers alike see the value of one card they can use everyday, whether at home or abroad.”
Strong Regional Results
Strong GDV growth was reported for all MasterCard's regions, which all reported double-digit gains in 2002: the U.S. rose 16.2%; Europe, 15.0%; Asia/Pacific, 10.6%; Latin America, 26.2%; South Asia, Middle East/Africa, 23.0%; and, Canada, 18.0%. Global growth was generated by both strong purchase volume, up 14.4%, and cash volume, up 17.1%.
At the end of 2002, MasterCard became the leading brand in the U.S. in credit cards, based on the number of cards issued and outstanding balances. The number of MasterCard credit cards issued in the United States was up 14.9% to almost 267 million, and outstanding balances reached US$285.8 billion, a 15.7% increase. The number of debit MasterCard cards issued rose 15.1% to 47.1 million.
In the United States, which accounts for more than half of total MasterCard GDV, MasterCard-branded cards were used for nearly 6.9 billion transactions in 2002, generating $602.2 billion in GDV, a 16.2% increase over 2001. Both strong purchase volume growth of 15.9% and strong cash volume growth of 17.0% drove this high growth rate.
“MasterCard's achievements in North America have led some in the industry to observe that we are 'the ones to watch,' and we couldn't agree more,” said Ruth Ann Marshall, president of MasterCard North America. “And while our 2002 accomplishments are by themselves quite significant, the most successful organizations always stay focused on priorities of the moment while at the same time preparing for the future. We are doing just that, as evidenced by the simultaneous progress we have made in emerging segments of our business such as prepaid cards, eB2B solutions, new acceptance categories and online bill presentment and payment.”
“In both the United States and Canada, MasterCard's momentum is real as we continually live up to the promise of being the best business partner,” she said.
United States GDV growth for fourth quarter was 12.2%. Fourth quarter 2002 purchase volume growth rate of 14.2% versus the same period in 2001. Despite the most challenging holiday shopping season in over a decade, with only 2.2% growth in sales according to the National Retail Federation, MasterCard saw U.S. GDV rise 13.5% for the November through December shopping period.
In Canada, GDV rose 18.0% for the full year, and 13.4% for the fourth quarter. MasterCard-branded transactions in Canada remained strong in 2002, up 16.6% over the same period in 2001. At the end of the year, Canadian banks had increased the number of MasterCard cards issued by 19.9%.
In Europe, MasterCard GDV rose almost 15.0% in 2002 to US$242.6 billion. Card issuance increased throughout Europe in 2002 by 11.5%. GDV growth in Europe increased by 16.2% in the fourth quarter of 2002 compared with the same period last year. Europe is the largest cardholder base for Maestro, with 226.1 million Maestro cards, a 9.2% increase over the same period in 2001. There was a 25.3% increase in the number of merchant terminals accepting Maestro in the fourth quarter of 2002.
The Asia/Pacific region reported GDV growth of 10.6% in 2002, to almost US$223.2 billion, and the number of cards issued in the region rose 11.0% to 112.5 million. This was driven by strong GDV growth in Korea (up 23.0%), Australia (up 14.9%) and Japan (up 10.0%). Fourth quarter GDV rose 5.2% in 2002 over the like 2001 period. With over 188.5 million Maestro cards, Asia/Pacific was the second largest Maestro region as of December 31, 2002. The number of Maestro cards in the region rose 32.6% over year-end 2001.
Latin America reported a strong 26.2% increase in GDV for 2002, as the number of cards issued in the region increased 11.6%. Driven by strong fourth quarter 2002 GDV performance in Mexico and Brazil, Latin America experienced a GDV increase of 25.9% for the quarter versus fourth quarter 2001. The increase is the 12th consecutive quarter of high double-digit GDV growth for the region. With 29.9 million Maestro cards in circulation, the growth for fourth quarter of 2002 was close to 12.6% over 2001, and the number of merchant terminals in the region increased over 25.2%.
In South Asia, Middle East/Africa, GDV grew 23.0% during 2002, and 22.8% for fourth quarter with solid transaction growth of 9.9%. Maestro acceptance in the region has been growing significantly with an increase of 41.2% in merchant terminals accepting Maestro as of December 31, 2002, compared to the same period in 2001. As of the fourth quarter 2002, there were over 15.4 million Maestro cards in circulation.
About MasterCard International
MasterCard International has a comprehensive portfolio of well-known, widely accepted payment brands including MasterCard, Cirrus and Maestro. With approximately 25,000 MasterCard, Cirrus and Maestro members worldwide, MasterCard serves consumers and businesses, both large and small, in 210 countries and territories. MasterCard is a leader in quality and innovation, offering a wide range of payment solutions in the virtual and traditional worlds. The MasterCard award-winning Priceless advertising campaign is now seen in 96 countries and in 45 languages, giving the MasterCard brand a truly global reach and scope. With more than 30 million acceptance locations including over 820,000 MasterCard/Maestro/Cirrus ATMs around the world, no payment card is more widely accepted globally than MasterCard. For the year ended December 31, 2002, gross dollar volume exceeded US$1.14 trillion. MasterCard can be reached through its website at www.mastercardinternational.com.