Mastercard profit falls as pandemic hits spending volumes

(Reuters) – Mastercard Inc reported a 28% slump in quarterly profit on Wednesday as fewer people used its cards to shop, travel and pay bills during the COVID-19 pandemic, hitting transaction volumes for the payment processor.

The pandemic has forced companies to lay off workers by the millions, hurting their spending power, while shoppers have also stayed at home to avoid contracting the respiratory disease.

A slowdown in travel around the world has also taken a toll on payment processors’ cross-border volumes.

Mastercard reported a 36% drop in cross-border volume on a local currency basis in the quarter. Gross dollar volume, the dollar value of transactions processed, rose 1% to $1.6 trillion. (https://bit.ly/34CIvyt)

Net income fell to $1.5 billion, or $1.51 per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30 from $2.1 billion, or $2.07 per share, a year earlier.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Ramakrishnan M.)