Visa Q2 - Key Growth Drivers Starting To Ramp Up

Visa reported better-than-expected earnings for the latest quarter, boosted by an 11% year-on-year increase in payments volume. The payment processing giant has been sluggish of late due to the lack of cross-border transactions and limited travel.

Revenues slipped 2% to $5.73 billion, but came in well ahead of analysts' expectations of $5.56 billion. Net income came in at $3.03 billion, which is very impressive considering that the high margin cross-border payment volumes were down 11%.

Visa processed 37.6 billion separate transactions in the period, an 8% year-on-year increase, led by domestic transactions. Management said "Our key business driver growth rates are starting to ramp up, reflecting the depressed levels in 2020 due to Covid-19 and making year-over-year comparisons difficult to interpret".

Last year October I made a strong assertion that e-commerce will probably stay elevated thanks to pandemic induced behavioural changes and that companies like Visa, Mastercard and other fintech business will emerge as winners. So far, we've seen that thesis play out first-hand!