Turning to page four. During the third quarter, our business continues to generate healthy transactions and good volumes on a local currency basis. Clearly the secular shift from cash to electronic payment forms continues to provide significant growth opportunities. Worldwide Gross Dollar Volume or GDV was relatively flat at 0.3% on a local currency basis in the third quarter and declined 4.7% on a U.S. dollar converted basis to $633 billion.
As with the last few quarters the deceleration in the overall local currency growth rate can be attributed to the U.S., where GDV growth declined 8% due to a double-digit decline in credit volume. Across the rest of the world, GDV continued to grow by 6.3% on a local currency basis or a decline of 2.4% on a U.S. dollar basis. This spread between local currency growth and U.S. dollar growth is smaller than the last three quarters, primarily due to the weakening U.S. dollar against other currencies during the third quarter.
Worldwide debit GDV grew 15.2% for the quarter on a local currency basis. This compares to about 19.2% growth in the third quarter of last year and it is the highest quarterly growth rate this year.
In the U.S., debit GDV volume grew 7.2%. Debit growth for the rest of the world was almost 26.5%, primarily driven once again by several countries in our Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa region due to market growth and customer wins.
On a local currency basis, worldwide purchase volume was also relatively flat at 0.4%. Similar to the GDV trend, U.S. purchase volume declined 6.5% for the quarter driven by a decline in credit volumes. The decline in gas prices on a year-over-year basis accounted for approximately 30% of the decline in U.S. purchase volume.
For the quarter, cross border volume growth on a local currency basis was about flat, down 0.3% and declined 6.4% on a U.S. dollar converted basis. We have seen positive signs of stabilization in the third quarter versus the second quarter, partially from an increase in Americans traveling abroad as well as from cross border spending from Asia. When we look at process transactions in the third quarter, they increased 7.6% compared with a year-ago quarter to $5.8 billion.
In Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa and the Latin American and Caribbean regions, process transactions grew at double-digit rates while all other regions grew at a mid-to-high single-digit rate on a year-over-year basis.
We have also begun to see some impact on our process transactions in the U.K. due to a Maestro portfolio lost that we discussed last year. The number of MasterCard branded cards worldwide remained flat at 964 million in the quarter and excluding the U.S., the rest of the world card issuance grew 8.5%. As of September 30th, 2009 there were approximately 1.6 billion MasterCard and Maestro branded cards issued.
Now, let''s turn to page five. As I mentioned earlier, net revenue grew 2% on an as reported basis and on a constant currency basis, net revenue grew 3.9% for the third quarter. Domestic assessments decreased 1.3% from the prior year, primarily due to the impact of converting local currency volumes to their strengthening functional currencies, which are then used to calculate revenues.
While GDV growth was slightly positive on a local currency basis, it declined 4.7% on a U.S. dollar basis compared to the prior year''s period. The remainder of the European pricing introduced in October 2008 that was not repealed in July of this year contributed to offsetting the decrease.
Cross border volume fees decreased by 9.6% versus Q3 of ''08, primarily due to lower cross border volumes and the translation effect of local currency volumes to U.S. dollars. Across border volumes decreased slightly. On a local currency basis, they declined 6.4% on a U.S. dollar basis.
Transaction processing fees increased 16.4% compared to the prior period, primarily due to pricing changes introduced in the U.S. in April this year which accounted for 11 percentage points of the increase. Growth and process transactions accounted for most of the remaining increase.
Other revenues decreased 1% on an as reported basis, but grew 0.4% on a constant currency basis. Rebates and incentives were largely flat versus the same period last year. The impact of lower volumes and rebates was offset by incremental rebates and incentives for new and renewed agreements.
Now, we''ll turn to page six for some detail on expenses. As part of our cost containment efforts and reallocation of investments, we continued to execute on a number of expense management initiatives.
Excluding special items, total operating expenses decreased 13.3% during the third quarter. Currency fluctuations of 1.3 percentage points contributed to the decline. Without the impact of severance in both this quarter and the year-ago quarter, total operating expenses declined 17.1%. The decrease was mainly driven by the following.
General and Administrative expenses decreased 7.9% with currency fluctuations essentially accounting for 1.1 percentage points of the decline. Looking at the categories within General and Administrative expenses, professional fees declined by 37.3% or $22 million during the quarter primarily due to a reduction in legal costs and consulting expenses.
Travel expenses decreased approximately 50% or $10 million on a year-over-year basis, as a result of continuing cost reduction initiatives. The decrease in G&A was partially offset by personnel costs for the quarter, which increased 4.9% due to the $31 million severance charge. This charge reflects the $0.15 impact on our reported diluted EPS for the third quarter of 2009. Excluding severance charges, personnel costs declined 4.3% versus the same period in 2008.
Advertising and Marketing spend decreased by 29.4% versus the year-ago period. The total amount spent was lower than what we had expected, primarily due to the slower redeployment of funds to growth markets and certain other initiatives in support of fourth quarter contains. Foreign currency fluctuations accounted for 1.5 percentage points of the decline.
Moving to the cash flow statement and balance sheet highlights on page five. We generated $316 million in cash from operations and ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents and current investments of $2.9 billion. At the end of the quarter, we made a prepayment at a discounted amount of $335 million for our remaining obligation under the 2003 U.S. merchant lawsuit settlement. This completes our financial obligations under this settlement.
As a result, we saw a $0.07 positive impact to EPS in the third quarter due to the gain realized on the obligation. We anticipate there will be an additional $0.03 positive impact to our fourth quarter EPS, as we will no longer have to record interest accretion for this settlement. As we have shared with you before, we believe this prepayment is an effective use of our cash.
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