Purchases on Mastercard-branded cards in Europe grew 10.3% in local currency in the third quarter of 2026, down from 13.2% a year earlier, according to the earnings release Mastercard issued on October 29, 2026. It was the slowest rate in the nine quarters of regional data the company publishes. Europe still moved more money through the network than any other region – $1.06 trillion of gross dollar volume, against $867 billion in the United States – but its card base grew just 3.2%, the weakest of the five regions Mastercard reports, and cash volume declined for the first time in the period covered.
In Short
Mastercard says people in Europe spent more on its cards between July and September 2026 than a year before, but the increase was the smallest it has recorded in more than two years, even though Europe is still where the most money passes through its network. That matters to shops, online sellers and advertisers across the region, because card spending is both how their customers pay and, increasingly, the data that marketing products are built on. Europeans also took out less cash, signed up for fewer new cards and spent across European borders at a slower pace, while two new claims filed on behalf of UK merchants in October 2026 seek about £1.9 billion over the fees they pay to accept Mastercard. The result is a European business that is still large and still growing, but no longer at the speed of 2024, and under rising legal pressure over what merchants are charged.
Europe in the third quarter
The numbers come from the operating performance tables at the back of the release, which break Mastercard-branded activity into five regions: Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa; Canada; Europe; Latin America; and the United States. PPC Land reported the company’s global results on October 29, including net revenue of $9.8 billion, up 14%. This article looks only at Europe.
For the three months to September 30, 2026, the European figures were:
- Gross dollar volume: $1,060 billion, up 8.3% in local currency and 6.1% in US dollars
- Purchase volume: $873 billion, up 10.3% in local currency
- Purchase transactions: 23,074 million, up 9.0%
- Cash volume: $186 billion, down 0.4% in local currency
- Cash transactions: 862 million
- Cards: 994 million
Gross dollar volume, in Mastercard’s definition, is purchase volume plus cash volume, and “includes the impact of balance transfers and convenience checks.” A year earlier, the same region recorded $999 billion of gross dollar volume, $807 billion of purchases, 21,168 million purchase transactions, $192 billion of cash volume, 936 million cash transactions and 963 million cards.
Europe is the largest of the five regions by gross dollar volume, purchase volume and purchase transactions, though Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa has more cards and more cash transactions. Its gross dollar volume was 22% larger than the United States’ $867 billion, by PPC Land’s calculation, and accounted for 35.9% of the worldwide total of $2,952 billion, against 36.3% a year earlier. Purchase volume was 8.7% larger than the US figure of $803 billion. The gap in transaction counts is far wider: Mastercard-branded cards recorded 23.1 billion purchases in Europe in the quarter, against 12.0 billion in the United States – 1.9 times as many – and 38.8% of the 59.5 billion purchase transactions worldwide. Averaged over the quarter’s 92 days, that is roughly 251 million card purchases a day in Europe.
Europe also accounted for slightly more than half of all Mastercard gross dollar volume outside the United States: $1,060 billion of $2,084 billion, or 50.9%.
Smaller baskets than the US
Dividing purchase volume by purchase transactions gives the average value of a European card purchase: $37.83 in the third quarter, by PPC Land’s calculation, against $66.94 in the United States, $57.17 in Canada, $36.32 in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and $24.12 in Latin America. The worldwide average was $41.75.
Those averages are converted at Mastercard’s quarterly exchange rates, so they move with currencies as well as shopping behaviour. In US dollars, the European average was $38.12 a year earlier. Measured in local currency – by comparing the 10.3% growth in purchase volume with the 9.0% growth in transactions – the average European purchase grew by about 1.2% in the third quarter, against about 3.1% in the third quarter of 2025. That is PPC Land’s arithmetic, not a figure Mastercard publishes, and the release offers no explanation for it. The pattern it describes is plain enough: European card use is still expanding in number of transactions, but each transaction is growing in value more slowly than a year ago.
Two years of slowing growth
The release gives only year-on-year comparisons. The supplemental operating data Mastercard published the same day extends the series back to the third quarter of 2024, and it shows a steady decline in European growth over nine quarters.
Gross dollar volume growth in Europe, in local currency, ran at 15.1% in the third quarter of 2024 and peaked at 16.2% in the fourth. It then fell almost every quarter: 12.9%, 13.3%, 11.5%, 10.0%, 9.1%, 8.5% and, in the third quarter of 2026, 8.3%. The latest figure is about half the late-2024 peak. Purchase volume followed the same path, from 16.3% and 18.0% in the second half of 2024 down to 10.5% in the second quarter of 2026 and 10.3% in the third.
Europe remains above the worldwide average, but by a much smaller margin. In the third quarter of 2024, European gross dollar volume grew 15.1% while worldwide volume grew 10.6%, a gap of 4.5 percentage points. Two years later the figures were 8.3% and 7.5%, a gap of 0.8 points. Only Latin America, at 13.5%, grew faster in the latest quarter. Canada grew 7.6%, the United States 5.9% and Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa 5.8%.
Transaction growth tells a slightly different story. European purchase transactions grew 13.2% in the third quarter of 2024, slowed to 7.7% by the first quarter of 2026, then picked up to 8.6% and 9.0% in the two quarters since. Over the first nine months of 2026, purchase transactions grew 8.5%, purchase volume 10.7% and gross dollar volume 8.6%, against 10.3%, 14.3% and 12.5% for the same period of 2025.
In dollar terms, European gross dollar volume rose from $868 billion in the third quarter of 2024 to $1,060 billion two years later, the highest of the nine quarters in the table. It first passed $1 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2025, dipped to $943 billion in the first quarter of 2026, and has risen in each quarter since.
Cash falls for the first time
Cash is where the European figures change most sharply. Cash volume – which Mastercard defines as cash disbursements, including balance transfers and convenience checks – fell 0.4% in local currency to $186 billion in the third quarter. It is the first decline in the nine quarters of European data. Growth had been 10.4% in the third quarter of 2024, 4.7% a year ago, and 0.2% in the second quarter of 2026.
The number of cash transactions has been shrinking for longer. Europe recorded 862 million in the third quarter, down 7.9% from 936 million a year earlier and down 13.1% from 992 million two years earlier, by PPC Land’s calculation. Every one of the nine quarters shows a year-on-year fall, ranging from 1.7% in the third quarter of 2024 to 9.0%, the steepest, in the first quarter of 2026.
Fewer withdrawals, each one larger: the average European cash transaction was worth $215.80 in the third quarter, against $205.10 a year earlier and $179.40 two years earlier, again by PPC Land’s arithmetic in US dollars. Cash made up 17.5% of European gross dollar volume, down from 19.2% a year earlier and 20.5% two years earlier. The share is still more than twice that of the United States, where cash was 7.4% of gross dollar volume in the quarter, but well below Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (21.8%) and Latin America (25.1%).
Worldwide, cash volume rose 0.4% and cash transactions fell 5.3%. In the United States, cash volume fell 3.7%.
The card base slows to 3.2%
Mastercard’s customers – the banks and other issuers – had 994 million Mastercard-branded cards in Europe at the end of September, up 3.2% from 963 million a year earlier. That is the slowest growth of any region. Latin America grew its card base 19.1% to 627 million, Canada 6.5%, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa 6.3% and the United States 4.9%. It is also the first time in the nine quarters of data that European card growth fell below the US rate; the two were level at 4.8% in the second quarter of 2026.
The decline has been continuous. European card growth was 11.7% in the third quarter of 2024 and 9.4% a year ago, then 8.5%, 6.1%, 4.8% and 3.2%. In absolute terms, Europe added 31 million cards over the past year, against 82 million in the year before. Latin America added 100 million, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa 64 million and the United States 35 million. In the first quarter of 2026, the European card count actually fell, from 978 million to 973 million – one of only two quarter-on-quarter declines for any region in the table, the other being a dip of one million in the United States at the start of 2025.
Mastercard attaches caveats to these numbers. Card data is supplied by its customers and “is subject to certain limited verification by Mastercard,” according to the notes to the tables, and “a portion of the data set forth in the cards columns reflects the impact of routine portfolio changes among customers and other practices that may lead to over counting of the underlying data in certain circumstances.” The counts include virtual cards. And the regional tables cover only Mastercard-branded cards: “Debit transactions on Maestro and Cirrus-branded cards and transactions involving brands other than Mastercard are not included.” Across all brands, the company says its customers had issued 3.8 billion Mastercard and Maestro-branded cards worldwide as of September 30. The release does not say how many of those are in Europe, nor why European card growth has slowed.
Dollars versus local currency
Mastercard reports regional growth “on the basis of local currency information, in order to eliminate the impact of changes in the value of currencies against the U.S. dollar,” according to the release. The dollar figures in the tables use “the average exchange rate for each quarter.”
The difference between the two is large for Europe. In the third quarter, European gross dollar volume grew 6.1% in dollars and 8.3% in local currency, so currency movements subtracted roughly two percentage points. A year earlier the effect ran the other way: 15.1% in dollars against 11.5% in local terms. Over the first nine months of 2026, dollar growth of 10.5% again exceeded local growth of 8.6%. Local currency comparisons work much like constant currency reporting for revenue, restating growth as if exchange rates had not moved.
Mastercard’s quarterly report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, filed the same day, adds context. The company’s primary functional currencies are the US dollar, the euro, the British pound and the Brazilian real. Mastercard converts local spending into both US dollars and euros to calculate gross dollar volume, so the strength or weakness of both currencies affects its pricing metrics for domestic and cross-border assessments and some volume-based rebates. Over the nine months to September 30, the increase in its accumulated foreign currency translation losses came mainly from the fall of the British pound and the euro against the dollar, partly offset by a stronger Brazilian real, according to the filing. The company also held €1.7 billion of euro-denominated debt designated as a hedge of part of its net investment in its European operations.
Mastercard does not report revenue for Europe on its own. Its closest disclosure, in the quarterly report, is a combined line for Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa: $5,617 million in the third quarter, against $4,951 million a year earlier, an increase of 13.5% by PPC Land’s arithmetic and 57.3% of total net revenue. Revenue from the Americas grew about 14.8% to $4,190 million. Over nine months, the combined non-Americas line reached $15,728 million, up about 14.2%.
The release also warns that regional volume and revenue are not the same thing. The tables “include information with respect to transactions involving Mastercard-branded cards that are not switched by Mastercard and transactions for which Mastercard does not earn significant revenues.”
Spending across European borders
Cross-border activity, where a card’s country of issue differs from the merchant’s, is priced and reported separately by Mastercard. The release reports worldwide cross-border volume growth of 11% in local currency for the quarter, without a regional split. The investor presentation Mastercard used for its October 29 earnings call separates one European line, and it shows the same slowdown.
Intra-Europe cross-border volume – card spending that crosses a border between two European countries – grew 12% in the second quarter of 2026, then 10% in each of July, August and September, and 8% from October 1 to October 21. All other cross-border volume grew 11% in the second quarter, 12% in the third and 12% in October to date. In the second quarter, intra-European flows were growing faster than the rest of the world’s cross-border business. By the third quarter they were two points behind, and by October four points behind.
The same presentation shows cross-border travel spending, which includes card-present and online travel purchases, accelerating from 6% in the second quarter to 8% in the third, before easing to 7% in October. Cross-border card-not-present spending outside travel, a rough proxy for online shopping from foreign merchants, slowed from 20% in the second quarter to 15% in the third. Neither of those lines is broken down by region, and the presentation gives no reason for the intra-European slowdown.
The legal bill in Europe
The release itself mentions European litigation only indirectly. Its list of risk factors includes “regulation related to the payments industry (including regulatory, legislative and litigation activity with respect to interchange rates and surcharging)” and “merchants’ continued focus on acceptance costs.” The special items Mastercard excluded from its adjusted results describe US merchant settlements, complaints over its ATM non-discrimination rule and a restructuring charge; none names a European case. In the third quarter, the $74 million of litigation provisions was “primarily due to settlements with merchants who opted out of the U.S. merchant class litigation.”
The quarterly report describes the European cases in detail, and they are substantial.
United Kingdom
UK merchants have been filing claims since 2012 over what they paid to accept Mastercard credit and debit cards, challenging among other things Mastercard’s cross-border interchange fees and its domestic interchange fees in the UK and Ireland. Merchants in other European countries have brought similar claims. Mastercard says it has resolved a substantial amount of these through settlement or judgment, but more than £0.5 billion (about $0.7 billion) of claims remain unresolved, and further individual claims have been filed in UK courts during 2026.
The litigation has not gone entirely Mastercard’s way. In 2025, the UK trial court decided against Mastercard on certain liability issues. In March 2026, Mastercard was granted permission to appeal that decision on all grounds, with the appeal hearing scheduled for February 2027. In February 2026, the trial court ruled on certain damages issues, some in Mastercard’s favour; the company is seeking permission to appeal those it lost. More liability and damages issues are scheduled for trial in October 2027.
A separate collective action, covering commercial card transactions in both the UK and the European Union, claims more than £1 billion (about $1.3 billion). The court granted the application in June 2024 and refused Mastercard permission to appeal. In February 2026, it excluded more than 100 merchants from the class on procedural grounds. Liability and damages in that claim are now being tried alongside the UK and pan-European merchant cases.
Then, in October 2026, Mastercard and Visa were served with two new proposed collective actions on behalf of UK merchants that have accepted card transactions since October 2020. The first seeks about £1.5 billion (about $2.0 billion) from Mastercard over consumer domestic and cross-border transactions. The second seeks about £0.4 billion (about $0.5 billion) over consumer online cross-border transactions.
Portugal, the Netherlands and Brussels
In Portugal, Mastercard is defending a proposed consumer collective action seeking about €0.4 billion (about $0.5 billion) for interchange fees allegedly passed on to consumers by Portuguese merchants over roughly 20 years. The claim seeks to build on the European Commission’s 2019 resolution of its investigation into Mastercard’s central acquiring rules and interregional interchange fees – the fees on payments at European merchants with cards issued elsewhere. Mastercard disputes both liability and damages. A trial originally scheduled for October 2026 has been stayed pending the resolution of related issues in a claim involving separate parties.
In the Netherlands, Mastercard and Visa were served in 2025 with a proposed collective action on behalf of Dutch merchants over interregional interchange fees from 1992 onward, seeking declaratory relief and damages of about €0.3 billion (about $0.3 billion). Both countries use opt-out collective redress, the model in which a single representative sues on behalf of everyone in a defined class unless they choose to leave it, as does the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal.
The European Commission has its own inquiry open. In 2024, Mastercard received a formal request for information connected with an investigation into alleged anti-competitive behaviour by certain card scheme services in the European Union and the European Economic Area, according to the quarterly report. The request focuses on Mastercard’s practices on network fees related to acquirers – the banks and processors that sign up merchants. Mastercard says it is cooperating.
Taken at face value and using Mastercard’s own dollar conversions, the European claims listed in the filing add up to roughly $5.3 billion, by PPC Land’s arithmetic. That exceeds the company’s third-quarter net income of $4.6 billion. The quarterly report describes no liability recorded for any of the European matters. Mastercard’s general policy, set out in the same note, is to record a liability only when a loss is both probable and can be reasonably estimated; across the company, accrued litigation on the balance sheet fell to $262 million at September 30 from $800 million at the end of 2025.
Europe’s payment politics
The figures arrive as European institutions debate how much of the region’s payments should depend on non-European networks. On June 23, 2026, the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee voted 43 to 14, with one abstention, on its position on the digital euro, proposing that holding limits be set by the European Commission on the basis of European Central Bank recommendations and that a roll-out of at least 24 months follow authorisation. The debate has turned on Europe’s growing reliance on non-EU payment providers such as Visa and Mastercard, and the public-interest group Finance Watch argued the digital euro would give merchants a cheaper alternative to private card schemes. Mastercard was among the institutions the rapporteur met between February and June 2026.
Mastercard’s release does not mention the digital euro, or any European payment initiative by name. Its risk factors include “the impact of preferential or protective government actions,” regulation of “account-based payments systems,” and “the challenges relating to operating a real-time account-based payments system and to working with new customers and end users.” They also list “competition in the global payments industry (including disintermediation and pricing pressure).”
The company has, at the same time, used Europe as a testing ground for newer products. On April 30, 2026, Mastercard and Rabobank completed the first AI agent-initiated payment in the Netherlands, a pilot in which an agent bought a coffee tasting experience on Priceless.com with a Rabobank Mastercard credit card, using Agent Pay and Mastercard Payment Passkeys. Michael Miebach, Mastercard’s chief executive, referred to that strategy only in general terms in the release: “Another strong quarter for Mastercard, delivering net revenue growth of 14%. More Mastercard credentials in more hands give us a powerful foundation, backed by our global reach and innovation. From advancing Agentic Commerce to our new Global Money Platform through BVNK, we’re shaping how people pay, manage and exchange across currencies. We’re not waiting for the future of commerce. We’re building it.” Neither the agentic commerce work nor the BVNK platform, acquired on August 3, 2026, is quantified for Europe or any other region.
European card spending is the largest single pool of Mastercard transaction data, and transaction data is what payment networks now sell to advertisers. Mastercard launched its commerce media network on October 1, 2025, drawing on more than 160 billion payments a year, and is one of several payment networks now selling commerce media built on what cardholders buy. Where does that raw material sit? The third-quarter tables answer the question: almost 39% of all Mastercard purchase transactions worldwide happen in Europe, at an average value of under $38. Cash disbursements on Mastercard cards in Europe fell for the first time in the published data, while card purchases kept growing.
Europe is also where using that data is hardest. When IAS and Mastercard introduced a product linking media quality signals to Mastercard spend data in March 2026, it was limited to US campaigns from the second quarter of 2026, and PPC Land noted then that European markets present a more complicated expansion path. On that evidence, the largest pool of Mastercard transactions and the first market for this kind of product sit on different continents.
For merchants selling across the region, the intra-European cross-border figures matter more directly. Spending between European countries on Mastercard cards grew 8% in the first three weeks of October, against 12% for the rest of the world’s cross-border business. Retailers that run marketplace listings or acquisition campaigns in neighbouring European markets are exposed to that rate, and one of the two new UK claims concerns exactly this category: the fees on consumer online cross-border transactions.
The fees themselves are the third point. Interchange and scheme fees set part of what a merchant pays every time a customer taps or clicks to pay, and so part of the margin from which marketing budgets are funded. Mastercard faces claims of roughly $5.3 billion in the UK, Portugal and the Netherlands over those fees, an open European Commission inquiry into its fees for acquirers, and a policy debate in Brussels about building a European alternative. None of those processes has concluded.
What the documents do not say
The release, supplemental data, investor presentation and quarterly report leave several questions about Europe open. Mastercard does not define which countries its Europe region includes, and gives no split between the euro area, the UK and the rest of the region. It does not report European revenue on its own, only a combined figure for Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It gives no reason for the two-year slowdown in European volume growth, for the deceleration in European card numbers or for the fall in the first quarter of 2026, and does not say how much of the card-count change reflects portfolio moves between issuers or between the Maestro and Mastercard brands. The intra-European cross-border line is not split between travel and online spending. The quarterly report records no liability for any European claim and gives no estimate of possible losses. And the materials say nothing about the digital euro, about European payment initiatives that compete with card schemes, or about where the BVNK platform will operate.
Timeline
- 2012: UK merchants begin filing damages claims against Mastercard over interchange fees.
- 2019: The European Commission resolves its investigation into Mastercard’s central acquiring rules and interregional interchange fees.
- June 2024: A UK court grants the collective action application over commercial card transactions in the UK and the EU.
- 2024: The European Commission sends Mastercard a formal request for information on network fees related to acquirers.
- Third quarter 2024: European gross dollar volume grows 15.1% in local currency; Europe has 881 million Mastercard-branded cards.
- Fourth quarter 2024: European volume growth peaks at 16.2%.
- 2025: A UK trial court decides against Mastercard on certain liability issues; Dutch merchants serve a proposed collective action over interregional interchange fees.
- October 1, 2025: Mastercard launches its commerce media network.
- Fourth quarter 2025: European gross dollar volume passes $1 trillion in a quarter for the first time in the published data.
- First quarter 2026: The European card count falls from 978 million to 973 million.
- February 2026: The UK trial court excludes more than 100 merchants from the commercial card class and rules on certain damages issues.
- March 2026: Mastercard is granted permission to appeal the UK liability ruling on all grounds; IAS and Mastercard introduce a US-only sales outcomes product.
- April 30, 2026: Mastercard and Rabobank complete the first AI agent-initiated payment in the Netherlands.
- Second quarter 2026: Intra-Europe cross-border volume grows 12%.
- June 23, 2026: The European Parliament’s ECON committee votes 43 to 14 on the digital euro.
- August 3, 2026: Mastercard acquires BVNK.
- Third quarter 2026: European purchase volume grows 10.3%, card count 3.2% and cash volume falls 0.4%; intra-Europe cross-border growth slows to 10%.
- October 2026: Two new proposed UK collective actions seek about £1.5 billion and £0.4 billion; a Portuguese trial originally set for this month is stayed.
- October 1-21, 2026: Intra-Europe cross-border volume grows 8%.
- October 29, 2026: Mastercard publishes its third-quarter results; PPC Land reports the global figures.
- February 2027: The UK appeal hearing on merchant interchange liability is scheduled.
- October 2027: Further UK liability and damages issues are scheduled for trial.
Summary
Who: Mastercard Incorporated and its chief executive Michael Miebach; the banks that issue Mastercard cards in Europe; European merchants and consumers; UK, Portuguese and Dutch claimants; and the European Commission and European Parliament. The figures matter to retailers, online sellers and advertisers that rely on European card spending and on payment data for marketing.
What: Purchase volume on Mastercard-branded cards in Europe grew 10.3% in local currency in the third quarter of 2026, down from 13.2% a year earlier, and gross dollar volume grew 8.3% to $1.06 trillion, the slowest rates in nine quarters of published data. The European card base grew 3.2% to 994 million, the slowest of any region, cash volume fell 0.4% and cash transactions fell 7.9%. Intra-European cross-border spending slowed from 12% in the second quarter to 8% in October. Mastercard’s quarterly report lists European merchant and consumer claims of roughly $5.3 billion, including two new UK claims served in October 2026.
When: Mastercard published the results on October 29, 2026, for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, with cross-border data through October 21.
Where: Mastercard’s Europe region, with litigation in the United Kingdom, Portugal and the Netherlands and a European Commission investigation covering the EU and the European Economic Area. Mastercard is based in Purchase, New York.
Why: Europe is the largest region on Mastercard’s network by spending volume and purchase transactions, and the main source of the transaction data that payment networks increasingly sell to advertisers. Its growth has roughly halved in two years, its card base has nearly stopped expanding, and the fees merchants pay to accept its cards face legal and political challenges across the region.
Source: ppc.land
