Although the economic recession may be over for the United Sates, increasing gasoline prices may still discourage consumer spending.  This is what the payment network's president of U.S. markets, Chris McWilton said at the Reuters Future of Finance Summit. 

McWilton added, "It's slow; it's erratic, the statistics we see suggest it is a slow recovery. People continue to be cautious with what they spend.  Confidence is building, but at a fairly slow rate."

He suggested that elevated gasoline prices would be best test in regards to the certainty of the recovery.  Due to the volatile situation in the Middle East, crude oil prices increased to $114 a barrel on Tuesday. 

He said, "If you get a $4, or some people are predicting $5 gallon of gas, that could be the wildcard."

McWilton also suggested that retailers would more likely find willing bank partners to issue their own branded credit cards. 

"Organizations are starting to say, 'This is behind us, we at least can put together a set of assumptions about bad debt loss rates and unemployment levels,'" he said.

A prominent example of this would be Target Corp.  Last week, the company reported quadrupled revenue from its credit card business during the fourth quarter of the year.  The increase in profit can be attributed to a fewer number of consumer debts being written off. 

McWilton said the market for credit card portfolios have improved dramatically in recent times. 

"There were just not a lot of buyers that wanted to jump in the middle of the typhoon," he said.

MasterCard is also expected to make more deals in the online retail sector, which is now predominately controlled by companies like Amazon.com.  In October, MasterCard paid $520 million for the British online payment services company DataCash.  More acquisitions of such nature is expected.  McWilton said, "It is the only area where you can't do something with cash or a check- it's made for electronic payments products."