If you go back to the First Quarter Prepared Remarks, I think were in Cameron’s section what you would have seen for the first time for a number of reasons, but OptBlue being a primary reason, is a substantially higher revenue growth rate relative to transaction growth rate. And at least some of that is attributable to the fact that we’re getting better traction, capturing share at better marginal economics on OptBlue versus our traditional, some of our traditional programs. I think that’s probably one of the ways to think about what the benefit is to Global Payments is a better yield per transaction as we move away from just a pure switch fee which is what we used to get through American Express or programs like it into more of a traditional acquiring mode where we get basis points on volume. And I think that’s probably as much as we can say about the economics to us from American Express.
Glenn Greene
Okay. Understood. On Canada, I think what you said it was 6% constant currency growth and I think last quarter you did have some pricing benefits — and I’m not talking about international change related — how much of the 6% constant currency growth this quarter was transaction based versus pricing?
Cameron M. Bready
Last quarter you’ll note we did make reference to some pricing initiatives that we did have in Canada and that was a contributor to the growth that we were seeing on a local currency basis. Obviously that continues to be a component of it. But I’d say more importantly what we’re seeing in Canada is stable business fundamentals. When you look at transaction growth and spread, we’re seeing a relatively stable fundamental basis for the Canadian business which is really contributing to the local currency performance we’re seeing. Naturally we saw 7% roughly decline in the Canadian dollar and that’s why you’re seeing the US dollar results that we’re seeing.
Glenn Greene
And if I could slip in one more, the 50 basis points of margin expansion for the year, could you just delineate North America versus international expectations?
Cameron M. Bready
We haven’t provided specific guidance for either of the two segments in terms of what we expect other than to say we expect margin expansion for both of those segments which is going to contribute to the overall roughly 50 basis point expansion we’re anticipating for the total company.
Glenn Greene
Okay, great. Thank you.
Jeffrey S. Sloan
Thanks Glenn.
Cameron M. Bready
Thanks Glenn.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question is from Darrin Peller of Barclays. You may begin.
Darrin Peller, Managing Director at Barclays Investment Bank
Thanks guys. Nice job on the quarter. Just want to start off on capital structure, if you can give us a quick update on your strategy. You’ve obviously been much more sort of in favor of buybacks but I know Jeff you mentioned looking for more deal opportunities internationally especially, so where do we stand now on that?
Jeffrey S. Sloan
Yes, I’ll start Darrin, with the strategy question and I think Cameron will put in a lot of the financial details. So we announced three transactions in the last four months really. Two of the three of which were outside of North America, those being Ezidebit and the JV with Bank of the Philippine Islands. So I would say Darrin, as it relates to corporate development and pipeline, we’re now in the mode having just announced three deals in the last number of months of really rebuilding the pipeline.
In terms of location of the pipeline, we’re opportunistic. So as we’ve said before, we’ve got to find something that’s for sale with a good partner with attractive returns to our shareholders and we do measure that relative to re-purchase. So we’re very focused on the IRR, as well as the cash earnings accretion from the repurchases, relative to the acquisitions to the extent that we can risk weight them. And that’s how we think about the balance between the two. Cameron, you want to comment on the capacity and repurchase?
Cameron M. Bready
Sure, I’ll be happy to. As you’ll know and I’ll just remind you of the comments I made in my prepared remarks, which is we did increase our share repurchase authorization to $300 million. We did execute some re-purchases in Q2, although relatively minimal compared to things we’ve done historically.
