Visa Q3 Earnings Call Highlights

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Visa (NYSE:V) reported fiscal third-quarter 2026 net revenue of $11.6 billion, up 14% from a year earlier, while earnings per share rose 11% to $3.32. Chief Executive Officer Ryan McInerney said both measures exceeded the company’s expectations as payments volume surpassed $4 trillion for the first time in Visa’s history.

Payments volume increased 10% year over year on a constant-dollar basis, while processed transactions grew 10% to 72 billion. McInerney attributed the results to resilient consumer spending, client wins across consumer and commercial payments, product development, and growth in value-added services.

Consumer Spending and Cross-Border Trends

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Chief Financial Officer Chris Suh said U.S. payments volume increased 10% year over year, accelerating by roughly two percentage points from the second quarter. U.S. credit volume rose 11%, while debit grew 9%. The company cited higher tax refunds, fuel costs, retail promotional-event timing, Visa Direct growth, and FIFA-related spending as contributors.

Suh said growth was broad-based across credit and debit, discretionary and nondiscretionary spending, card-present and card-not-present purchases, and consumer spending bands. “We do not see signs of the lower spend consumer weakening in our volumes,” he said.

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International payments volume increased 10% in constant dollars. Cross-border volume, excluding transactions within Europe, grew 12%, including 16% growth in cross-border e-commerce and 10% growth in travel-related cross-border volume.

The FIFA World Cup supported inbound spending in North America and Latin America during June, according to Visa. From June 11 through June 30, inbound cross-border card-present spending in U.S. host cities rose nearly 25% year over year. Kansas City recorded a peak increase of 1,000% in cross-border card-present transaction growth on match days, while Mexico and Canada posted inbound cross-border card-present volume growth of more than 70% and 35%, respectively.

However, Suh emphasized that Visa’s cross-border business is geographically diversified and that no region represents more than 25% of cross-border volume. Through July 21, U.S. payments volume was up 9%, cross-border volume excluding intra-Europe transactions was up 14%, and processed transactions increased 9%.

Value-Added Services Lead Revenue Growth

Value-added services revenue rose 34% year over year in constant dollars to $3.8 billion. Suh said the growth reflected underlying business activity, pricing, FIFA-related marketing-services engagements, and the acquisition of Prisma. Greater utilization of network products in issuing and acceptance solutions also lifted results.

Commercial and money movement solutions revenue increased 17% in constant dollars, while commercial payments volume climbed 13%. Visa Direct transactions rose 21% to 4 billion during the quarter.

McInerney highlighted several client agreements, including a renewal of Visa’s 55-year relationship with Bradesco in Brazil, an agreement with Grupo Aval in Colombia involving domestic processing and Visa Direct cross-border transactions, and a consumer credit portfolio win with NatWest in the United Kingdom. Visa said its credential count rose 8% year over year and tokenized transactions approached 60% of global e-commerce transactions.

Visa also continued to expand its issuer-processing operations through Pismo and DPS. McInerney said the company plans to pilot DPS Full Service Credit, an integrated credit issuer-processing solution aimed at fintechs and small- to mid-sized banks, in the fourth quarter. The company has secured its first U.S. client and expects general availability next year.

AI, Stablecoins and Workforce Changes

Management outlined further investments in artificial intelligence, stablecoins, and agentic commerce. McInerney said Visa has deployed more than 150 AI-powered applications and released more than 300 major products over the past 12 months.

The company said AI-enabled product-development teams have achieved 80% more code commits, reduced requirement-definition time from 30 days to five days, and delivered feature development more than 65% faster. Visa is reorganizing some product-development teams into smaller “agentic squads” supported by AI tools and human oversight.

Visa also joined Open Standard, an initiative planning to issue the OpenUSD stablecoin, and launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform for stablecoin minting, movement, and management. McInerney said Visa intends to remain “multi-coin, multi-chain” rather than select a single winner in the stablecoin ecosystem.

In agentic commerce, Visa announced partnerships with OpenAI and Meta. The company said its products, including Agent Score, Agent Directory, Token Assurance Framework, and Visa Intelligent Commerce, are intended to help make AI-initiated transactions more secure and transparent.

Visa disclosed that it is eliminating roles, primarily in technology and product teams, as it seeks to improve efficiency and direct resources toward growth investments. The company recorded $563 million in GAAP severance costs during the quarter related to workforce changes.

Outlook and Capital Returns

For the fiscal fourth quarter, Visa expects adjusted net revenue growth at the high end of low double digits and operating expense growth in the low double digits. The company expects fourth-quarter EPS growth at the low end of the mid-teens, with a tax rate of about 19%.

For the full fiscal year, Visa raised its outlook to forecast net revenue growth in the low end of the low teens and EPS growth in the low end of the mid-teens. The company expects full-year operating expense growth in the low end of the low teens and a tax rate between 18% and 18.25%.

During the third quarter, Visa repurchased $4.9 billion of stock and paid $1.3 billion in dividends. At the end of June, the company had $28.4 billion remaining under its buyback authorization.

About Visa (NYSE:V)

Visa Inc is a global payments technology company that facilitates electronic funds transfers and digital commerce by connecting consumers, merchants, financial institutions and governments. The firm operates one of the world's largest payment networks, providing processing, authorization, clearing and settlement services for credit, debit and prepaid card transactions. Visa's network-based model enables partner banks and other issuers to offer branded payment products while Visa focuses on the infrastructure, standards and technologies that move money securely and efficiently around the world.

Visa's product and service portfolio includes card-based payment products for consumers and businesses, real-time push-payment capabilities, tokenization and authentication services, fraud and risk-management tools, data analytics and APIs for fintech and merchant integration.

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