Visa Expands Money Movement as Card Spending Accelerates

Visa’s latest earnings call put two different versions of digital commerce on the same balance sheet. Version one: Consumers are still spending more on credit and debit cards. Version two: Consumers begin with AI agents and move through stablecoins, tokens and new money-movement channels.

As for the card-based business, U.S. payments volume grew 10% year over year in the fiscal third quarter, with credit up 11% and debit up 9%. Visa Direct transactions, meanwhile, jumped 21%.

But CEO Ryan McInerney spent a significant portion of Tuesday’s (July 28) call talking about how Visa expects the mechanics surrounding those transactions to change. “If stablecoins are reshaping the back end of commerce, we see AI as transforming the front end,” he told analysts. Visa, he added, believes agentic commerce will expand its addressable market.

That front end is becoming an operating issue inside Visa as well as a product strategy. The company has deployed AI in engineering, client service and other functions, and is moving from AI assistance toward agents capable of performing tasks with human supervision. Product teams that previously had 10 or more people are being reorganized into agentic squads of two to four, according to management commentary on the call.

The consumer-facing question is different: Can an AI agent be trusted to spend somebody else’s money?

McInerney called agentic commerce a “when, not an if,” but said adoption will depend on consumers trusting that an agent is authorized, that a payment reflects their intent and that protections exist when something goes wrong. Visa is building agent scores, an agent directory and token-assurance infrastructure around that problem.

The company’s broader digital product push extends beyond AI. Cybersource’s Unified Checkout, launched globally in March, is designed to orchestrate multiple payment types through a Visa-hosted experience and has been enabled by more than 4,500 sellers and acquirers. Visa is also combining DPS and Pismo capabilities into an integrated debit and credit issuer-processing product aimed at FinTechs and small to midsize banks.

McInerney said in the Q&A that Pismo addresses banks’ efforts to move legacy technology to cloud and API-based architectures. Visa has taken Pismo into 19 new markets since acquiring it, while its U.S. strategy uses DPS and Pismo differently depending on issuer needs.

Spending Accelerates While the Rails Expand

CFO Chris Suh said U.S. payment volumes had reached a rate Visa had not seen since fiscal 2019 outside the post-pandemic recovery. Visa attributed the improvement to a combination of tax refunds, fuel prices, retail promotions, Visa Direct and FIFA-related spending.

The trend had moderated somewhat by July 21. U.S. payments volume was running 9% higher, with both credit and debit up 9%. Cross-border volume excluding intra-Europe was up 14%, including an 18% increase in eCommerce and 12% increase in travel.

Suh cautioned in the Q&A that June and July cross-border eCommerce growth was unusually high, reflecting promotional-shopping timing and calendar effects, and said he expected growth to settle toward a more typical relationship with travel.

At the same time, the underlying payment credential is increasingly digital. Tokenized penetration is nearing 60% of Visa’s global eCommerce transactions.

Stablecoins extend that digital strategy beyond card credentials. Visa joined Open Standard, which plans to issue OpenUSD, and launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform for minting, moving and managing stablecoins.

“Visa, going forward, will remain multi-coin and multi-chain,” McInerney said. “Our role is not to pick winners.” Stablecoins, he added, have yet to reach broad scale beyond a limited number of use cases, including stablecoin-linked cards.

Visa reported fiscal third-quarter net revenue of $11.6 billion, up 14%.

For the fourth quarter, Visa expects adjusted constant-dollar net revenue growth at the high end of low double digits and EPS growth at the low end of the mid-teens. Full-year revenue growth is expected at the low end of the low teens.  Shares were down about 1% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.