Visa reported a strong fiscal third quarter on Tuesday, with net revenue rising 14% from a year earlier to $11.6 billion and GAAP net income climbing 7% to $5.6 billion, as resilient spending lifted payment activity across its global network.
Earnings per share increased 10% to $2.97, while adjusted earnings reached $3.32 per share, up 11%. Visa’s gains came despite operating expenses rising 19% to $4.8 billion, including $563 million in severance costs and a $237 million litigation provision. Visa also recorded $9 million in net equity investment losses.
Payments volume rose 10% in constant-dollar terms, while processed transactions increased 10% and total cross-border volume climbed 13% on the same basis.
Visa builds across the stablecoin ecosystem
Beyond its core results, Visa used its earnings call to outline a broad stablecoin strategy spanning blockchains, issuance, wallets, infrastructure, orchestration and consumer-facing applications.
“We are active in investing in each layer of the stablecoin stack,” the company said, adding that it had made progress during the quarter in both issuance and applications.
The push follows Visa’s July launch of the Visa Stablecoin Platform, an enterprise product that allows banks, fintech and crypto companies to mint, hold, transfer and redeem stablecoins through a Visa-managed environment.
Visa said in April that its stablecoin settlement pilot supported nine blockchains and had reached a $7 billion annualized run rate, up 50% from the previous quarter, as the company expanded options for issuers and acquirers to settle payments across blockchain networks.
Those operations remain small beside Visa’s wider business, with Visa-branded credit and debit programs recording $4.66 trillion in total volume and 90.3 billion payment and cash transactions during the quarter.
The two sides of Visa’s AI strategy: 2,600 jobs to be cut
Visa is expanding its artificial intelligence strategy alongside its stablecoin push, arguing that AI is changing the customer-facing side of commerce while digital currencies reshape the infrastructure behind payments. Its Visa Intelligent Commerce platform is designed to let verified AI agents discover products, initiate purchases and complete transactions under controls set by consumers and merchants.
“AI is transforming the front end of commerce. Stablecoins are reshaping the back end,” said Jack Forestell, Chief Product & Strategy Officer at Visa. “Visa’s role is to enable it to work securely, reliably and at global scale, for every participant in the ecosystem.”
The company believes agent-led shopping could widen its addressable market, even as AI reshapes Visa’s own operations. The payments giant plans to cut about 2,600 jobs, or 7% of its workforce, as part of a broader efficiency drive, with technology and product teams expected to account for most of the reductions.
CEO Ryan McInerney told employees that the restructuring would allow Visa to reinvest in its highest-potential opportunities. While the company said AI was not the sole reason for the cuts, the move highlights both sides of its strategy: Visa is building products for an AI-driven future while reshaping its workforce to operate more efficiently within it.
