Penchant for plastic drives MasterCard earnings beat

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

MasterCard reported quarterly earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street's expectations on Wednesday as more people used cards to make payments.

After the earnings announcement the company's shares ticked higher. (Click here to get the latest quotes for the company's shares.)

The world's second-largest payment network's net income rose to $848 million, or $6.96 per share, in the second quarter, from $700 million, or $5.55 per share, a year earlier.

Revenue increased 15 percent to $2.1 billion from $1.82 billion a year ago.

Analysts had expected the company to report earnings excluding items of $6.30 a share on $2.00 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.