Visa Inc. (V) reported fiscal second-quarter adjusted earnings per share of $2.74 late Tuesday, beating the $2.70 consensus, as the world's largest payments network logged record processing volume and double-digit cross-border growth. Net revenue rose 11% year-on-year to $9.62 billion, ahead of the $9.55 billion estimate. Operating margin expanded 80 basis points to 67.4%.
Cross-border payment volume excluding intra-Europe expanded 13% in constant currency, materially above the 10% consensus, with North American outbound travel to Europe contributing 350 basis points of the gain despite Iran-conflict-related airline route cancellations. Total processed transactions hit a record 64.7 billion, up 9.6%. Service revenue grew 8.3%, data-processing revenue rose 12.4%, and international transaction revenue jumped 14.1%.
Strategic Initiatives
CFO Chris Suh raised the full-year fiscal 2026 net-revenue growth guidance to "high-end of high single-digits" from "high single-digits," implying $40.4 billion versus the prior $39.7 billion. He cited momentum in Visa Direct, the firm's real-time payments network, where transaction count grew 25% in Q2 to 2.8 billion transactions. Visa also flagged 1.4 billion new tokenized payment credentials provisioned in the quarter.
CEO Ryan McInerney spent significant call time on the firm's stablecoin strategy. Visa now settles approximately $1.6 billion of monthly USDC volumes through its merchant-acquirer rails — up from $300 million a year ago — and expects the figure to triple by year-end on the back of the recently launched euro-denominated tokenized settlement program with Worldpay and Adyen.
Stock Reaction
Visa shares rose 3.4% in extended trade Tuesday and added another 1.2% in Wednesday's pre-market session, reaching $314.40. Mastercard (MA) climbed 1.8% in sympathy. Year-to-date Visa is up 9.4%, while Mastercard has gained 11.2%. The Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLF) hit a fresh record on the back of the print, helped also by improved bank-stock sentiment after Tuesday's strong JPMorgan and Wells Fargo updates.