PayPal Extras Mastercard Program Renewed

On Wednesday (July 27), Mastercard and PayPal announced a multi-year extension of the co-branded consumer credit card program, PayPal Extras Mastercard, in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

“We are proud to continue our longstanding relationship with PayPal through this program,” Craig Vosburg, president of North America for Mastercard, said in a press release. “In this increasingly digital world, we are providing PayPal cardholders with the most advanced and secure technologies, giving them the core guarantees and benefits they’ve come to expect from Mastercard, regardless of how and where they pay.”

The PayPal Extras Mastercard is designed to provide PayPal members with additional value with every purchase, both online and in stores. The card also includes Buyer Protection for every purchase made via PayPal.

“PayPal looks forward to building on our longstanding relationship with Mastercard to deliver continued value and choice to our customers with the PayPal Extras Mastercard,” Gary Marino, SVP of the Americas for PayPal, explained. “Mastercard has been a tremendous partner for several years, and we are pleased to extend this agreement.”

With the PayPal Extras Mastercard, cardholders can earn triple reward points for gas and restaurant purchases, double reward points for PayPal and eBay purchases and one reward point for every $1 spent everywhere else Mastercard is accepted.

Last week, Mastercard also made headlines for its acquisition of VocaLink for $920 million.

Strategically speaking, the deal gives Mastercard control of the firm, which processes most payroll and household bill processing in the U.K. VocaLink operates Bacs, the automated clearing house that acts as a conduit to direct credit and direct debit payments between bank accounts; Faster Payments, which is the real-time account-to-account payments service conducted over mobile, internet and phone rails; and LINK, the country’s ATM network.

The acquisition of VocaLink and 11 billion annual transactions (and £182 million in annual revenues) looks to be a definitive declaration of Mastercard’s competitive intent against Visa. The latter has stated it would, in turn, look to boost its own presence in the region.