Mastercard earnings Q3 2017

Pau Barrena | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Ajay Banga, chief executive officer of MasterCard Inc.

MasterCard is expected to report third-quarter earnings before the bell Tuesday.

Here’s what Wall Street expects:

• EPS: $1.23, according to Thomson Reuters
• Revenue: $3.28 billion, according to Thomson Reuters

MasterCard is hoping to build off momentum from the first and second quarters, when the company posted strong numbers as a result of strong payment volume growth, a favorable foreign exchange environment, and innovative additions to its card lineup.

Like rival Visa, MasterCard generates revenue by facilitating credit- and debit-card transactions and both their revenue streams are closely linked to consumer spending power.

Consumer spending in the United States, which accounts for more than two-thirds of nationwide economic activity, has been on an upswing, supported by a tightening labor market.

Most recently, MasterCard announced that customers won’t need to sign receipts anymore when they make purchases with the credit card.

The payment network is eliminating the need to sign for purchases made on the card at retail, as of April. Whether to sign or not will now be an optional decision for merchants in the U.S. and Canada.

Commenting on the potential in the payments space, No. 1-ranked payments analyst Lisa Ellis of Bernstein told CNBC’s “Closing Bell,” that “The reality is consumer payments, which is where Visa and MasterCard play, is extraordinarily efficient today.”

Consumer payments “are the one spot where there’s not a problem waiting to be fixed,” she said earlier this month.