Visa (V) FY2025 results: revenue $40.0 billion, up 11.3% on the year

Visa runs a payments network. It does not issue cards, extend credit or set the rates and fees account holders pay, and the filing states plainly that Visa is not a financial institution and bears no credit risk on any of those activities. What it does is move the transaction: authorisation, clearing and settlement among consumers, issuing and acquiring financial institutions and sellers, in a structure it calls the four-party model. Its network, VisaNet, reaches more than 200 countries and territories. In fiscal 2025, 329 billion payments and cash transactions carrying the Visa brand were processed by Visa or other networks, an average of 901 million a day, of which 258 billion ran on Visa's own network. Total payments and cash volume was $17 trillion, nearly 14,500 financial institutions used Visa products, and there were nearly 5 billion payment credentials available at more than 175 million merchant locations.

How a transaction works

A consumer buys from a seller using a Visa card or payment product. The seller passes the transaction data to an acquirer, usually a bank or third-party processing firm. Through VisaNet the acquirer passes it to Visa, which sends it to the issuer to check the account balance or credit line. Once authorised, the issuer posts the transaction to the consumer's account and pays the acquirer the value of the transaction less the interchange reimbursement fee, and the acquirer pays the seller the purchase amount less the merchant discount rate. Visa sets default interchange fees that apply where no other settlement terms have been established, but those defaults are set independently of what Visa charges issuers and acquirers, and acquirers set the fees they charge sellers themselves. The fees Visa receives are therefore not derived from either the interchange fee or the merchant discount rate.

What it is paid for

Service revenue is earned for services supporting client usage of Visa's payment services, and data processing revenue for authorisation, clearing and settlement, network access, maintenance and support, and the acceptance, risk and issuing services attached to them. International transaction revenue is earned for cross-border processing and currency conversion, and other revenue mainly for advisory work, licence fees for use of the Visa brand or technology, and fees for account holder services, certification and licensing. Set against those are client incentives, paid to financial institution clients, sellers and other partners to grow volume and acceptance.

Consumer payments

The core products are credit, debit and prepaid. Credit cards and digital payment credentials let consumers and businesses access credit to pay, through programmes operated by financial institution clients, co-brand partners, fintechs and affinity partners. Debit draws on funds already held in a deposit account, and the Visa/PLUS Global ATM network gives account holders cash access. Prepaid draws on a designated balance funded by an individual, a business or a government, covering reloadable cards, payroll, government and corporate disbursements, healthcare, gifting and travel.

Commercial and money movement

Visa Commercial Solutions is a card and virtual payments business for business-to-business flows, from small businesses up to large enterprises and governments: small business cards, corporate travel cards, purchasing cards, virtual cards and digital payment credentials, with payment, reconciliation and data to manage working capital, set spend controls and automate payment processes. Visa Direct is the money movement platform, built out through the acquisitions of Earthport, Currencycloud and YellowPepper, and it lets clients collect, hold, convert and send funds for person-to-person payments, account-to-account transfers, business and government payouts, seller settlements and refunds across more than 195 countries and territories. It uses more than 90 domestic payment schemes and more than 60 card and wallet networks, and in fiscal 2025 processed more than 12.5 billion transactions for more than 650 partners.

Value-added services

Four portfolios. Issuing Solutions, whose largest division is cardholder engagement, meaning airport lounge access, dining reservations, shopping experiences, event tickets and seller offers. Acceptance Solutions, the gateway connecting sellers to payment processing, plus services such as account verification, which checks for invalid or compromised credentials before a purchase. Risk and Security Solutions, fraud detection and account holder authentication underpinned by real-time AI-driven scores. And Advisory and Other Services, a global consulting practice with proprietary analytics models, data scientists and economists. As of 30 September 2025 the company offered more than 200 products and services.

Who it competes with

Every form of payment, paper-based ones included. Among electronic networks the filing names American Express, Diners Club and Discover, now owned by Capital One, JCB, Mastercard and UnionPay, noting that some are concentrated regionally, such as Discover in the United States, JCB in Japan and UnionPay in China. It also points to new entrants arriving through ecommerce, agent-based commerce, mobile payments, blockchain and digital currencies including stablecoins.

From Visa's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 30 September 2025. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 6 November 2025: read the full 10-K.