“Our strong performance in India is driven by Debit and Premium MasterCard products. More Indians are using Debit MasterCard for daily purchasing as debit cards not only allow cardholders direct access to their money for purchases, they can also help cardholders better manage their finances. In addition to debit cards, premium credit cards, including the World MasterCard, are also fast gaining in popularity in India as modes of payment,” said the company in a statement.

“We are pleased with our third quarter regional performance. The healthy growth validates our strategy to provide a broad suite of products to our bank customers which caters to their cardholders’ needs. We will continue to work closely with our customers to ensure that we can benefit from the ongoing shift toward mobile and electronic payments,” said Mr Vicky Bindra, President, APMEA, MasterCard Worldwide.

As of September 30, 2009, 262 million cards (excluding Maestro and Cirrus) have been issued by MasterCard customer financial institutions across APMEA. Cardholders in the region have made 1,080 million purchase transactions in the third quarter around 29.4 million acceptance locations worldwide.