Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Visa Inc. has had a busy quarter, with ventures in digital currencies, agentic commerce, and merchant acceptance. But its basic business remains payments on cards, and the underlying payments network supporting those transactions worldwide contributed to a slightly better than 14% improvement in overall revenue to $11.63 billion compared to the June quarter last year, beating Wall Street’s expectations.
In part, that result rode on the back of a 10% rise in payments volume in both the U.S. market and internationally compared to volume in the same period a year ago. Cross-border volume led the way, with a 13% increase. Cards are still the engine for payments networks like Visa, which reported a total of 5.2 billion worldwide, up 8%, with credit cards up 9% and debit up 7%.
These factors contributed to $5.6 billion in net income for the quarter and $17.5 billion for the nine months since Oct. 1, up 6.75% and nearly 17%, respectively.
The latest results come as Visa works to launch new services and refresh existing ones. New ventures for Visa include the Stablecoin Platform, launched earlier this month in a beta test with what Visa called “select clients.” The venture is intended to help banks and fintechs work out how to manage stablecoin transactions.
In June, the company launched an expansion of its Visa Accept service to let businesses send payouts, including consumer refunds, directly from their smart phones. Also in June, Visa said it will lend capabilities of its global network, including credentialing and security, to support agentic commerce as the technology is adopted by businesses and consumers.
Earlier this week, news emerged that Visa is planning to lay off 2,600 employees, or 7% of its workforce, in part to free up capital. The cuts also reflect the efficiencies introduced by AI, according to news reports.
Following Visa’s quarterly release, analysts sounded positive. “Overall, fundamentals remain well positioned to sustain solid double-digit revenue growth, with potential for margin expansion into next year and [Visa] remains one of our top picks in payments,” said a note from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.
