The immediate focus is establishing the authority behind those purchases. During Visa’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday (Oct. 27) after the markets closed, CEO Ryan McInerney described the work required to identify an agent, connect it to a customer and confirm that its spending follows the customer’s instructions.
“It is clear that in agentic, trust is the biggest barrier to scale,” he told analysts.
McInerney identified his firm as a key catalyst for cementing that trust, and offered up B2B payments as an early agentic application, including automated bill payment and invoice settlement.
Visa is also using agents internally. More than 60% of its product development and engineering teams have adopted an agentic toolchain. McInerney said 12 people delivered stablecoin-platform functionality in seven weeks, shortening work that previously would have required considerably more time and staff.
More Ways to Use a Credential
Visa’s credential base reached 5.2 billion at the end of the fiscal fourth quarter, up 6%, as management described expansion through co-branded cards, affluent products and debit portfolios.
“Our Flex credentials have tripled since last year,” McInerney said, citing growth among existing participants and new partners. Visa Pay, which connects digital wallets to Visa-accepting sellers, nearly tripled its geographic presence to 11 countries.
Tokenization is spreading across that base: More than half of available credentials and more than 60% of eCommerce transactions are tokenized. Visa processed tokenized transactions in 200 countries and territories during the year, providing infrastructure it can adapt for agentic purchases.
At physical checkout, tap-to-pay reached nearly 85% of face-to-face transactions globally and 75% in the United States. Tap to Phone exceeded 1 billion annual transactions across more than 25 million active mobile devices, extending acceptance among smaller businesses.
Visa Direct’s Stablecoin Business Moves Into Production
Visa Direct processed more than 15 billion transactions representing about $1.5 trillion in payments volume during fiscal 2026. Its stablecoin prefunding and cross-border money movement service moved from pilot to commercial production, allowing clients to fund payouts with digital currency.
“We are stablecoin-agnostic. We are blockchain-agnostic,” McInerney said during the Q&A, explaining that the initial USDC offering would accommodate additional stablecoins.
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Separately, Visa’s stablecoin settlement business exceeded a $25 billion annualized run rate, up tenfold year over year. That measures the pace of settlement, rather than the total settled during the year. Settlement supports five stablecoins across 10 blockchains, while stablecoin-linked card volume grew more than 150%.
Chief Financial Officer Chris Suh reported 23% quarterly growth in Visa Direct transactions, nearly two percentage points faster than the preceding quarter, primarily reflecting U.S. and Latin American demand.
Consumer spending also remained firm. U.S. payments volume grew 10%, with credit up 11% and debit up 9%. Both credit and debit matched their preceding-quarter rates following the longer-term acceleration discussed during the call.
Suh said lower-spending consumers showed no weakening in Visa’s volumes, although higher-spending customers continued to grow fastest.
Through Oct. 21, U.S. volume maintained those same growth rates. Cross-border volume excluding transactions within Europe grew 15%, with eCommerce up 17% and travel up 13%, in constant dollars.
Quarterly cross-border volume increased 14%. Commercial payments volume grew 13%, ahead of overall payments-volume growth of 9%, also in constant dollars.
Net revenue rose 13% to $12.1 billion for the quarter and 15% to $46 billion for the year.
Management sees opportunities for the combined DPS and Pismo offering among smaller U.S. institutions, while larger banks generally consider core banking separately from their other technology requirements.
For fiscal 2027, Visa forecasts low-double-digit adjusted revenue growth while investing in tokenization, agentic commerce, stablecoins and business payments.
Shares were down 1% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.
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