Mastercard Continues Growing Steadily
Although some metrics were lower than expected, they're moving in the right direction.

Here's our initial take on Mastercard's (NYSE: MA) first-quarter financial results.
Another quarter brought another period of low-teens revenue growth for Mastercard. It's one of the largest issuers of credit, debit, and other payment cards and the operator of the networks those cards run on. Revenue was up 14% to $7.3 billion, while gross dollar volume was up 9% (on a currency-neutral basis) to $2.42 trillion.
Mastercard continues to see solid growth in total cards being used too. Active cards surpassed 3.5 billion in the quarter, up 6% over the past year, while switched transactions increased 9% to 40.1 billion. In other words, the company continues to see strong and growing demand for its cards and access to its payments network, and cardholders are using their cards more often and for larger transactions.