Mastercard posted a rise in fourth-quarter profit on Thursday, as sustained consumer spending drove up its transaction volumes. Household spending has remained resilient despite tariff-fueled uncertainty, as consumers continue to spend on necessities.
During the holiday quarter, shoppers also locked in deals to stretch their discretionary budgets, lifting transaction volumes for processors. Mastercard’s gross dollar volume, the value of all transactions processed on its platform, rose 7%, and net revenue climbed 17.6% to $8.81 billion in the quarter. Shares of the company rose 2.4% in premarket trading. Cross-border volume, a metric that tracks spending on cards outside the country they were issued in, climbed 14%, underscoring sustained appetite for travel and leisure.
U.S. banks have seen their credit card balances edge up in the latest quarter, signaling sustained borrowing demand despite high interest rates. Spending has largely held up despite concerns of economic uncertainty fueled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade policies and sticky inflation, even as consumer confidence has waned in a sluggish labor market. Mastercard has also been shoring up its diversification push with services such as fraud protection and cybersecurity tools – typically higher margin products. The segment’s growth has outpaced its core network in recent quarters.
Revenue in the value-added services and solutions segment increased 26% during the fourth quarter. Its net income rose to $4.06 billion, or $4.52 per share, in the quarter, compared with $3.34 billion, or $3.64 per share, a year earlier. Mastercard is the first of Wall Street’s biggest payment processors to post earnings this quarter, with rival Visa set to report later in the day and American Express results due early on Friday.
