Visa leans into international, non-card payments to fuel growth

The news: Visa’s total payments volume increased 9% YoY in Q1 2025 (ending December 31, 2024), a slight acceleration from 8% YoY growth the year prior, per its earnings release.

• Debit card volume grew 10% YoY, while credit volume grew 8% YoY.
• International volume increased 11% YoY, versus 7% in the US.

Strong payment growth helped boost the network’s overall revenues. Visa’s net revenues increased 10% YoY in Q1 2025.

Here’s what propelled payments volume growth:

Strong holiday shopping

• “In the US, consumer holiday spending growth was in the upper mid-single digits on a year-over-year basis,” per CFO Chris Suh.
• Discretionary categories including retail, travel, and entertainment led growth.

New international card partnerships

• Visa launched a bevy of new consumer credit cards like one with digital bank Neon in Brazil.
• Visa is also trying to take volume from local networks: It partnered with Dutch Bangla Bank to take over 6 million credentials in Bangladesh, for example.
• Visa also launched new international co-brand credit cards, including the Times Black ICICI Bank and HSBC Taj credit cards in India.

Non-card payments

• Visa’s non-card payments got a boost from Visa Direct. Transactions grew 34% YoY in Q1. Visa Direct surpassed 10 billion transactions in 2024.
• Ecuador's Banco Pichincha began using Visa Direct for remittances in Q1.
• Visa also partnered with X Money. In addition to offering peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, Visa CEO Ryan McInerney also said the solution will help X creators get paid faster. The companies are also working on other use cases.

What’s next? Visa is preparing to launch account-to-account (A2A) payments in Europe early this year. The initial use case is bill pay, but it will expand to other payment types in the future, McInerney said.

Our take: Strong international and non-card growth helps diversify Visa’s revenue and volume streams. We forecast Visa’s US card network transaction value will total $6.837 trillion this year, up 7% YoY.

And it will help Visa maintain its momentum moving forward as it faces threats like swipe fee litigation and potential new competition from the Capital One and Discover merger.

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