MasterCard Looks to Offset Losses to Visa

Purchase, N.Y. (TheStreet) -- MasterCard (MA) posted quarterly earnings that exceeded Wall Street estimates, and CEO Robert Selander made sure during the company's conference call earlier Tuesday to point out some recent business wins.

The company is still much smaller than its rival Visa (V), and it has lost business to Visa on a number of fronts, but it does have a number of its own victories to tout.

Last month, MasterCard apparently "renewed and extended" an existing agreement with one of its largest customers, Bank of America (BAC), according to Selander.

"We look forward to working with Bank of America to grow our mutual businesses and to reinforce our already strong relationship," he said.

MasterCard has also launched a co-branded card program with Bank of America and Amazon (AMZN) in the United Kingdom.

In the United States, MasterCard signed a long-term extension of an existing agreement with Continental Airlines, which has partnered with JPMorgan Chase (JPM), to issue credit and debit co-branded cards.

The Purchase, N.Y.-based electronic payments firm reported a third-quarter profit of $456 million, or $3.48 a share. The average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters was for earnings of $2.94 a share in the September period on $1.35 billion of revenue.

Still disappointing numbers came out of MasterCard's worldwide purchase volume -- a key indicator of whether consumers are using their cards to make purchases. Purchase volume rose less than 1% to $480 billion in the third quarter. On the bright side MasterCard's transaction growth, particularly international debit cards, made good gains. Total transactions rose 7.6% to 5.8 billion.