More earnings analysis: https://betafinch.com ────────── ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown, where we take the numbers and the noise and turn them into something you can actually use. I'm Alex, joined as always by Jordan. Today we're diving into Visa's fiscal third quarter 2026 results. JORDAN: And Alex, this was a big one — Visa crossed $4 trillion in quarterly payments volume for the first time ever. ALEX: Huge milestone. But before we get into it — quick disclaimer. This podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. JORDAN: Right, so let's get into the numbers. Net revenue was $11.6 billion, up 14% year-over-year, ahead of expectations. EPS came in at $3.32, up 11%. Payments volume grew 10% in constant dollars, and processed transactions grew 10% too, to 72 billion transactions. ALEX: What jumped out to me most was the U.S. business. Payment volume grew 10% year-over-year — CEO Ryan McInerney and CFO Chris Suh both called that the strongest U.S. growth rate since fiscal 2019, excluding the post-COVID bounce. JORDAN: And there's a real story behind that acceleration. Tax refunds, fuel costs, retail promotions, strong Visa Direct growth, and — this is the fun one — the FIFA World Cup. ALEX: Yeah, let's talk about that, because the World Cup numbers are wild. In some host cities, card-present transactions were up as much as 20% on match days. Kansas City hit 1,000% year-over-year growth in cross-border card-present transactions during matches. JORDAN: One thousand percent. And it wasn't just the U.S. — Mexico saw inbound cross-border volume up more than 70%, Canada up over 35%. Tap-to-pay transit in Boston was up more than 50% during the tournament window. ALEX: Management was careful to note this is a bit of a sugar high, though. Chris Suh flagged that cross-border e-commerce, which was up 16% in the quarter, has already started moderating in July as some of those promotional and event-driven boosts fade. JORDAN: Right, so investors should expect some of that heat to cool off heading into Q4, even though the underlying business — travel, e-commerce, consumer spend — still looks healthy by their account. ALEX: Let's shift to what I think is the real long-term story here: value-added services, or VAS. That segment grew 34% in constant dollars to $3.8 billion. JORDAN: And it's not just marketing services riding the FIFA wave — though that helped a lot. Suh pointed out that issuing solutions, acceptance solutions, and risk and security collectively grew more than 20% every quarter over the trailing twelve months, which is faster than the growth rates Visa laid out at its investor day back in 2025. ALEX: So this isn't a one-quarter blip — it's a structural shift in the mix of the business. JORDAN: Commercial and money movement solutions also grew 17%, with Visa Direct transactions up 21% to $4 billion. And commercial payments volume growth actually outpaced Visa's overall volume growth, up 13%. ALEX: On the strategy side, two big themes stood out to me: AI and stablecoins. Visa said it's now running over 150 AI-powered applications internally and shipped more than 300 major product releases in the past year. They're restructuring product teams into smaller "agentic squads" of two to four people instead of ten-plus, and claiming 80% more code commits and 65% faster feature development. JORDAN: Which, notably, comes alongside some tougher news — Visa announced it's eliminating a number of roles, mostly in tech and product, tied to that AI-driven efficiency push. There was $563 million in severance costs this quarter. ALEX: Right, and when analysts asked about it on the call, Ryan McInerney's answer was basically: we take the savings from efficiency and reinvest them into growth areas — cr This episode includes AI-generated content.
