VisaNYSE · V

Visa's real revenue-category split (FY2025, per the 10-K) is service fees on volume, data-processing fees on transactions, and international transaction fees on cross-border activity — netted against client incentives, the rebates Visa pays issuers to keep them on-network. Data processing is now the largest single line at $20.0B, ahead of service revenue at roughly $17.5B, with international transaction fees at $14.2B — the smallest of the three lines but the fastest-growing.

The geographic split is the underrated story: FY2025 US revenue grew 6% to $15.6B, while international revenue grew 15% to $24.4B. Visa now earns roughly 61% of its revenue outside the United States, and that share is growing — the cash-to-digital shift is further along domestically than it is in most of the rest of the world Visa operates in.

How it makes money

A two-sided network with near-universal acceptance is almost impossible to dislodge. Merchants take Visa because consumers carry it; consumers carry it because merchants take it — and every new participant on either side makes the network more valuable to the other.

Three legs underwrite the call. Each stands on its own; together they explain why we're comfortable buying a stock at its 52-week high rather than waiting for a pullback that may not come.

“Visa doesn't pick winners in the card war — it owns the road all of them drive on, and it's now collecting more tolls abroad than at home.”

The income statement is close to the cleanest in large-cap: no inventory, no funding cost, no credit book. FY2025 GAAP net income was $20.1B (+2%); non-GAAP net income — which strips litigation provisions tied to the ongoing antitrust matters — was $22.5B (+11%), roughly in line with revenue growth. The gap between the two lines is the DOJ case showing up in the numbers, not a sign the underlying business slowed.

Revenue · $B

At 31.3× trailing earnings, Visa trades below its own five-year average and at a premium to Mastercard — a premium we think is earned by faster international growth and a cleaner near-term regulatory setup on the credit side of the network, even accounting for the DOJ debit case.

Forward P/E vs. reference

The case against, as plainly as the case for — including the one risk that's already in federal court.

A two-sided network with toll-road margins, compounding into fresh highs on international strength the market hasn't fully priced. We're comfortable buyers in the $350–$375 range with a $415 target over 12–18 months.

THE MODEL

Visa's income statement is close to the cleanest in large-cap: revenue scales with payments volume and cross-border activity, costs barely move, and operating margins run near 66%. There is no inventory, no credit book, no funding cost — just a network and a rulebook.

That is why Visa converts growth into free cash flow so efficiently and returns most of it through buybacks and dividends — FY2025 dividends and share repurchases together totalled $22.8B, up 9% year over year, on a base of roughly 34,100 employees running a $14.2T-volume network.

THE NUMBERS

Domestic volume is still the larger base; international is the growth. FY2025 US revenue grew 6% to $15.6B while international revenue grew 15% to $24.4B — international now makes up 61% of total net revenue, up from a smaller share the year before.

THE ACQUISITION

Visa acquired Pismo, a São Paulo-based cloud-native issuer-processing and core-banking platform, for $1 billion (closed 2024). Pismo processes close to $40B in annual transaction volume across roughly 80 million accounts and 40 million issued cards for clients including Citi, Itaú, Revolut, N26, Nubank and Cora — with reach across Latin America, Asia Pacific and Europe.

The strategic logic: Pismo's cloud-native APIs let Visa support emerging real-time payment rails — including Brazil's Pix system, one of the most successful account-to-account schemes in the world — as a platform Visa monetises rather than a network it competes against.