NEW YORK – MasterCard Inc. reported a profit of $40.9 million for the fourth quarter, Bloomberg reports. Revenue rose 17 percent to $839 million, attributable to the company processing more transactions and increasing prices on purchases made abroad.

MasterCard CEO Robert Selander set the company’s annual profit growth goal at 15 percent to 20 percent. With more consumers preferring credit and debit cards instead of cash or checks, MasterCard and other credit-card companies process more transactions. For example, American Express Co. last month reported a 23 percent profit increase for the fourth quarter, the news service reports.

“They look pretty good,” Anurag Rana, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, told the news service.

During the fourth quarter, the company dealt with 4.4 billion transactions, up 17 percent over the previous year. “Our success in displacing paper-based forms of payment reflects the strength of our brand and network,” Selander said in the statement.

Selander took the company public last year, and Visa International announced in 2006 that it will go public soon.