NYSE: V
VISA INC.CIK 0001403161 · Misc Business Services NEC
Visa is one of the world’s leaders in digital payments. Our purpose is to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid. Since Visa’s early days in 1958, we have been in the business of facilitating secure, reliable and efficient global commerce and money movement. We provide… About this business →
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About VISA INC.
Source: Item 1 (Business) from the 10-K filed November 6, 2025. Description as filed by the company with the SEC.
ITEM 1. Business
OVERVIEW
Visa is one of the world’s leaders in digital payments. Our purpose is to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid. Since Visa’s early days in 1958, we have been in the business of facilitating secure, reliable and efficient global commerce and money movement. We provide transaction processing services (primarily authorization, clearing and settlement) among consumers, issuing and acquiring financial institutions and sellers in a structure we call the “four-party” model. Please see Our Core Business discussion below. As the payments ecosystem continues to evolve, we have broadened this model to include digital banks, digital wallets, a range of financial technology companies (fintechs), governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). We are focused on extending, enhancing and investing in our proprietary advanced transaction processing network, VisaNet, to offer a single connection point for facilitating money movement to multiple endpoints through various form factors and innovative technologies across more than 200 countries and territories. Visa is committed to advancing innovation within the payment technology sector. Building upon our track record of industry leadership, including early adoption and integration of artificial intelligence (AI) models in payment systems, Visa continues to invest in the development and deployment of next-generation technologies, such as generative AI (GenAI), stablecoins and agentic commerce. During fiscal 2025, 329 billion payments and cash transactions with Visa’s brand were processed by Visa or other networks, equating to an average of 901 million transactions per day. Of the 329 billion total transactions, 258 billion were processed by Visa.
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•We offer a wide range of Visa-branded payment products that our clients, including nearly 14,500 financial institutions, use to develop and offer payment solutions or services, including credit, debit, prepaid and cash access programs for individual, business and government account holders. During fiscal 2025, Visa’s total payments and cash volume was $17 trillion, and we had nearly 5 billion payment credentials, which are issued Visa card accounts, that were available to be used at more than 175 million merchant locations worldwide.(1)
•We take an open partnership approach and seek to provide value by enabling access to our global network through multiple integration methods, including programmatic access via application programming interfaces (APIs) and structured data exchange through our Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. We partner with traditional financial institutions and emerging fintech and AI companies to innovate and expand the payments ecosystem, enabling them to leverage our platform infrastructure to accelerate their business growth and market expansion.
•We are using our componentized capabilities and global connectivity to power all types of payments and deliver services to all types of clients worldwide through our Visa as a Service stack, which has four layers: the foundation layer, the services layer, the solutions layer and the access layer. Our foundation layer comprises the network infrastructure that enables connections to approximately 12 billion cards, bank accounts and digital wallets with more than 175 million merchant locations across more than 200 countries and territories. Our services layer organizes core capabilities, including authentication, risk management and fraud detection, into discrete, reusable components that can be utilized individually or combined into solutions. These modular services are the building blocks of our comprehensive portfolio in our solutions layer, which are enhanced to create new features and capabilities for our clients. Finally, the access layer provides clients the entry point to these solutions via on-demand APIs, our MCP server that enables AI systems to interface with our Visa Intelligent Commerce APIs, and fully managed solutions. The Visa as a Service stack enables organizations of any size to access and scale Visa’s network capabilities globally.
•We are accelerating the migration to digital payments through our network of networks strategy. We aim to provide a single connection point so that Visa clients can enable money movement for businesses, governments and consumers, regardless of which network is used to start or complete the transaction. This model ultimately helps to unify a complex payments ecosystem. Visa’s network of networks approach creates opportunities by facilitating person-to-person (P2P), business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B) and government-to-consumer (G2C) payments, in addition to consumer-to-business (C2B) payments.
(1) Data provided to Visa by acquiring institutions and other third parties as of June 30, 2025.
•We provide value-added services to our clients, including Issuing Solutions, Acceptance Solutions, Risk and Security Solutions and Advisory and Other Services.
•We invest in and promote our brand to benefit our clients and partners through advertising, promotional and sponsorship initiatives with the International Olympic Committee, the International Paralympic Committee, the National Football League, the FIFA World Cup 2026TM and the Red Bull Formula One Teams (the Oracle Red Bull Racing Team and the Visa Cash App RB Formula One Team), among others. We also use these sponsorship assets to showcase our payment innovations.
FISCAL 2025 KEY STATISTICS
(1)Please see Item 7 of this report for a reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP financial results.
OUR CORE BUSINESS
In a typical Visa C2B payment transaction, the consumer purchases goods or services from a seller using a Visa card or payment product. The seller presents the transaction data to an acquirer, usually a bank or third-party processing firm that supports acceptance of Visa cards or payment products, for verification and processing. Through VisaNet, the acquirer presents the transaction data to Visa, which in turn sends the transaction data to the issuer to check the account holder’s account balance or credit line for authorization. After the transaction is authorized, the issuer posts the transaction to the consumer’s account and effectively pays the acquirer an amount equal to the value of the transaction, minus the interchange reimbursement fee (IRF). The acquirer pays the amount of the purchase, minus the merchant discount rate (MDR), to the seller.
Visa earns revenue by facilitating money movement across more than 200 countries and territories, among a global set of consumers, sellers, financial institutions and government entities, through innovative technologies.
Our net revenue in fiscal 2025 consisted of the following:
SERVICE REVENUE
Earned for services provided in support of client usage of Visa’s payment services and value-added services related to certain Issuing Solutions
OTHER REVENUE
Consists mainly of value-added services primarily related to Advisory and Other Services and certain Issuing Solutions; license fees for use of the Visa brand or technology; and fees for account holder services, certification and licensing
DATA PROCESSING REVENUE
Earned for authorization, clearing and settlement; value-added services primarily related to Acceptance Solutions, Risk and Security Solutions and certain Issuing Solutions; network access; and other maintenance and support services that facilitate transaction and information processing among our clients globally
CLIENT INCENTIVES
Paid to financial institution clients, sellers and other business partners to grow payments volume; increase Visa product acceptance; encourage seller acceptance and use of Visa’s payment services; and drive innovation
INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTION REVENUE
Earned for cross-border transaction processing and currency conversion activities
Please see Item 7 and Note 1—Summary of Significant Accounting Policies to our consolidated financial statements included in Item 8 of this report, which include disclosures on how we earn and recognize our revenue.
Visa provides payment processing for both non-Visa-branded and Visa-branded card transactions. In the context of non-Visa-branded card transactions, we facilitate payment processing by providing gateway routing services to other payment networks. At the client’s request, we may provide authorization, clearing or settlement services on our network before or after we route the transaction to the other payments network. In those instances, Visa may earn data processing revenue for the specific services provided. In the context of Visa-branded card transactions on our network, we provide authorization, clearing and settlement services and may earn service, data processing, international transaction or other revenue. Depending on applicable regulations, some payment processors may or may not use our network to process Visa-branded card transactions. If they use our network, we may earn service revenue and data processing revenue. If they do not use our network, we may earn only service revenue.
Visa is not a financial institution. We do not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for account holders of Visa products nor do we earn revenue from or bear credit risk with respect to any of these activities. Interchange reimbursement fees reflect the value sellers receive from accepting our products and play a key role in balancing the costs and benefits that account holders and sellers derive from participating in our payments network. Generally, IRFs are paid by acquirers to issuers. We establish default IRFs that apply absent other established settlement terms. These default IRFs are set independently from the revenue we receive from issuers and acquirers. Our acquiring clients are responsible for soliciting sellers and for setting the fees they charge to sellers for the MDR. Visa sets fees to acquirers independently from any fees that acquirers may charge sellers. Therefore, the fees we receive from issuers and acquirers are not derived from IRFs or MDRs.
Visa’s strategy is to accelerate revenue growth through consumer payments (CP), commercial and money movement solutions (CMS) and value-added services (VAS), as well as fortify the key foundations of our business model. In CP, we are focused on strengthening our impact in card-based consumer payments and expanding our reach in non-card-based payments. In CMS, formerly known as new flows, we are driving and enabling further penetration of commercial payments and money movement. Finally, in VAS, we are delivering innovative services to deepen our partnerships with our clients.
We seek to accelerate revenue growth through the following areas:
Consumer Payments
On an annual basis, we see more than $40 trillion(2) of addressable consumer spend, excluding Russia and China. Of this spend opportunity, we are pursuing an estimated more than $20 trillion annual opportunity in underserved consumer spend, spread across cash, check, legacy Automated Clearing House (ACH), account to account (A2A) payments and real time payments (RTP) or other less effective forms of digital payments.
We aim to grow CP by strengthening Visa’s impact in card-based consumer payments and expanding our reach in non-card-based payments. We are investing in Tap to Everything, token technology, cross-border capabilities, offerings to affluent consumers, consumer credit capabilities and other opportunities to drive our volume and expand the scope of our transactions and our payment credentials on top of which we can deliver a growing array of Visa services.
Core Products
Visa’s growth has been driven by the strength of our core products — credit, debit and prepaid.
(2) Visa analysis based on third-party studies for the period covering calendar year 2024.
Credit: Credit cards and digital payment credentials allow consumers and businesses to access credit to pay for goods and services. Credit cards are affiliated with programs operated by financial institution clients, co-brand partners, fintechs and affinity partners.
Debit: Debit cards and digital payment credentials allow consumers and small businesses to purchase goods and services using funds held in their deposit accounts. Debit cards enable account holders to transact in person, online or via mobile without cash or checks and without accessing a line of credit. The Visa/PLUS Global ATM network also provides debit, credit and prepaid account holders with cash access and other banking capabilities. Issuing and acquiring partnerships with both financial institutions and independent ATM operators enable these capabilities.
Prepaid: Prepaid cards and digital payment credentials draw from a designated balance funded by individuals, businesses or governments. Prepaid cards address many use cases and needs, including general purpose reloadable, payroll, government and corporate disbursements, healthcare, gifting and travel. Visa-branded prepaid cards also play an important part in financial inclusion, bringing payment solutions to those with limited or no access to traditional banking products.
Key Enablers
By enabling CP, we help our clients grow as digital commerce, new technologies and new participants continue to transform the payments ecosystem.
Tap to Everything
Since we introduced Tap to Pay technology 20 years ago, it has emerged as a preferred way to pay in the face-to-face environment. Tap to Pay adoption is growing and Tap to Pay has become the default way Visa cardholders pay, comprising 79% and 66% of all face-to-face transactions, globally and in the United States in fiscal 2025, respectively. In addition, we have activated more than 1,000 contactless public transport projects worldwide. We processed more than 2.4 billion contactless transactions on global transit systems in fiscal 2025, surpassing the number of transactions in 2024.
Building on the momentum of Tap to Pay, we continue to expand into new ‘Tap to Everything’ use cases. Our Tap to Phone capabilities, enabling any mobile device with near field communication capability to be converted to a payment acceptance terminal, has expanded. During fiscal 2025, we passed 20 million Tap to Phone transacting devices. In 2024, we launched our Tap to Add Card capability, enabling a consumer to add a payment credential to a digital wallet by tapping their card to their mobile device. This functionality is expanding and has more than 600 issuers participating globally, resulting in the service being live for more than 1.4 billion Visa credit and debit cards around the world. Tap to P2P, another ‘Tap to Everything’ use case, is a product that uses tokenization for security, incorporating Visa's Tap to Consumer Device and Software Development Kit (SDK) technology for contactless data transmission between devices and the convenience of Visa Direct's real time money movement for fund transfers. Finally, we are piloting our newest tap capability, Tap to Confirm, for issuers. In high-risk transaction types where an issuer might otherwise have declined the transaction, issuers can ask the consumer to tap to confirm the transaction, demonstrating that the consumer is in possession of the physical card.
Token Technology
We are adding identity-based authentication and other capabilities to our token technology to further drive preference for Visa payment types, including a solution for agentic commerce. Please see our Looking Ahead discussion below. Visa Token Service (VTS) brings trust to digital commerce innovation. As consumers increasingly rely on digital transactions, VTS is designed to enhance the digital ecosystem through improved authorization, reduced fraud and enhanced consumer experience. VTS helps protect digital transactions by replacing 16-digit Visa account numbers with a token that includes a surrogate account number, cryptographic information and other data to protect the underlying account information. This security technology can work for a variety of in-person or ecommerce payment transactions. As of September 30, 2025, Visa has provisioned more than 16 billion tokens.
In addition, the Visa Cloud Token Framework is a cloud-based security technology program that expands token use cases to mobile wallets, ecommerce platforms and Internet of Things devices, all while adding fraud mitigation functionality. We continue to build new capabilities, such as Visa Payment Passkey, which links the token to the consumer’s device passkey information, adding another layer of security to the payment experience. Building on these capabilities, we are progressing beyond earlier implementations like Click to Pay, which provides a simplified and more consistent ecommerce checkout experience by removing time-consuming key entry of personal
information and enabling consumer and transaction data to be passed securely between payments network participants.
Cross-Border
We are a preferred global payments network for cross-border travelers in key markets, differentiated by our risk management and fraud prevention capabilities, including tokenization, and our cross-border currency and settlement capabilities, which include foreign exchange solutions.
As our cross-border volume continues to grow year-over-year, we are investing in cross-border commerce through several strategic initiatives. These include expanding the scope and utility of our cross-border network, particularly in key travel corridors, where cash usage remains high, and increasing acceptance locations. We are also enhancing our value proposition in travel and ecommerce to drive consumer preference for Visa payment credentials and improving cross-border transaction performance and authorization rates. In addition, we are focused on improving the performance of cross-border portfolios and tapping into high-potential verticals with a significant mix of cross-border payments. We are also building more feature functionality with products like multi-currency payment credentials that allow travelers to hold and transact in multiple currencies seamlessly.
Offerings to Affluent Consumers
Visa is a global leader in affluent and premium co-branded programs, including our Infinite brand, which is designed to bring together benefits, experiences and product features to deliver a premium value proposition to our affluent cardholders. Our strength in this focus area is driven by core capabilities that align with the needs of affluent consumers, such as our global acceptance footprint, differentiated credit products, advanced fraud protection and dispute resolution services, brand equity and premium benefits.
We continue to invest in experiential benefits to better serve this consumer base, including music series, concierge services and access to premier hotels and restaurants, such as the Visa Dining Collection OpenTable Benefit. In addition, we leverage our portfolio of sponsorship assets to deliver unique experiences at events, including the Super Bowl, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the FIFA World Cup 2026TM and through our partnership with Visa’s two Red Bull Formula One racing teams. These benefits enhance our premium value proposition and strengthen relationships with issuing partners.
Affluent consumers represent a highly attractive market opportunity within our CP business. This focus area demonstrates significantly higher spend per cardholder in cross-border, credit and ecommerce volumes, generating more revenue for Visa compared to the average Visa cardholder.
Powering Credit
We have built a strong reputation and brand around our credit products by offering robust security, advanced fraud mitigation and effective dispute management. Over time, we have introduced several innovations that differentiate our credit offerings and drive consumer preference for Visa. For example, we were a pioneer in dual-message technology, which enables real-time transaction authorization, a capability that only a few payments providers globally can provide.
Even with our strong foundation in credit, significant opportunity remains in international markets, where the penetration of card-linked credit products as a percentage of consumer spending is less than half that of the U.S. To address this, we continue to develop new products that provide greater control and insight to our issuing clients and their customers. For example, Visa Flex Credential allows consumers to use a single Visa payment credential to access and switch between multiple funding sources, like debit and credit. As of September 30, 2025, we have more than 20 signed clients in more than 20 countries across all regions.
Expanding Our Reach in Consumer Payments
We aim to capture value and drive yield from CP currently routed through A2A networks via two primary strategies. First, we are focused on capturing A2A payments through card-enabled payment flows. One example of our most recent innovations in this space is Visa Pay, which we launched in 2025, expanding digital payment access by connecting participating digital wallets to Visa’s network with digital credentials for payments globally. In certain regions, digital wallet providers, A2A schemes and banks can adopt Visa Pay by connecting to our APIs directly, enabling access to Visa’s global acceptance as a white-label solution within the user’s app. In addition, we are piloting these same functionalities through our full stack SDK. In the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa markets, a stand-alone Visa Pay app enables banks to offer their customers the ability to set up a Visa account or payment credential and conduct payments at Visa acceptance locations.
Second, we leverage A2A networks to deliver Visa-branded A2A products, most notably through Tink, our open banking solution in regions, such as Europe and Latin America. Tink enables open banking and data exchange for A2A transactions. Since acquiring Tink in 2022, we have scaled our open banking payments network, reaching thousands of bank connections as of September 30, 2025. Please see our Advisory and Other Services discussion below. Visa is collaborating with our financial institution and fintech partners to bring Visa A2A to United Kingdom customers. In addition, as we expand the Visa as a Service stack, we are providing value-added services to local payment methods operating on A2A or RTP networks. Please see our Risk and Security Solutions discussion below.
Commercial & Money Movement Solutions
CMS is focused on driving digitization and improving the payments and money movement experience across all payment flows, beyond C2B, through our network of networks. These include P2P, B2C, B2B and G2C payments, which provide some of the largest payment opportunities in the world. Representing a total addressable opportunity of approximately $200 trillion(3) of payment flows annually, excluding Russia and China, this pillar of our business aims to make payments and money movement easier for businesses, consumers and governments, using both Visa’s global network and connectivity to other networks around the world.
We have two key objectives in this business area. The first objective is to address B2B payments flows from small businesses up to large enterprises and governments through our Visa Commercial Solutions, a card and virtual payments-led business. This part of the business focuses on addressing approximately $35 trillion of annual opportunity by converting small and medium business spend to our solutions; scaling our existing large and middle market use cases to more countries, corporates and partners; delivering product innovation and network flexibility, driving more B2B spend to cards and virtual payments, enabling new and emerging B2B verticals; and unlocking new commercial card acceptance with suppliers.
The second objective is to address money movement and a subset of B2B flows through Visa Direct. This part of the business focuses on growing our domestic business through our core P2P use case and penetrating new use cases, growing our cross-border flows through enhanced network capabilities; and deepening our relationships with existing clients through new use cases, corridors and services. Through our Visa Direct strategy, we are pursuing approximately $55 trillion of annual opportunity in P2P, B2C and G2C money movement flows and approximately $25 trillion of annual opportunity in B2B money movement flows.
Visa Commercial Solutions
As a long-time participant in the B2B ecosystem, we have been supporting small businesses, large and middle market companies, and governments with their payments needs. We continue to see opportunities for growth as businesses seek simple digital experiences, similar to those available to consumers. Visa offers a holistic suite of tailored solutions for businesses, providing payment, reconciliation and data to help manage working capital and drive efficiency, set spend controls, manage expenses and automate payment processes.
(3) Visa analysis based on third-party studies as of 2022.
Our portfolio of commercial payments solutions includes small business cards, corporate (travel) cards, purchasing cards, virtual cards and digital payment credentials. Businesses look to optimize processes and effectively manage working capital by utilizing our commercial payments solutions. To support small businesses we expanded the small business supplier matching webtool so that it is directly accessible to small- and medium-size businesses, enhancing their ability to use their payment credentials for business payments. For large business spend, we have been expanding our presence in specific commercial spend verticals, such as fleet and fuel, travel and agriculture. We have also extended our products and capabilities specifically for accounts receivable and accounts payable spend, through either embedded finance capabilities, or new solutions like our Accounts Receivable Manager virtual card automation solution in the U.S.
Visa Direct
We have the largest money movement platform in the world — by transactions, volumes and endpoints — through years of product innovation and acquisitions. Visa Direct began with cards, by taking our existing Visa network and allowing users to receive money to their bank accounts via their debit cards as an endpoint. We have also expanded our network of networks by adding connectivity to accounts through our acquisition of Earthport. Through further innovation, we added digital wallets.
We have strengthened our position in the money movement space through additional assets we have acquired and built, such as Currencycloud and YellowPepper, to create the Visa Direct platform. The Visa Direct platform facilitates domestic and cross-border money movement, enabling clients to collect, hold, convert and send funds across our network. Visa Direct enables P2P payments and A2A transfers, business and government payouts to individuals or small businesses, seller settlements and refunds, among other use cases, across more than 195 countries and territories. Visa Direct utilizes more than 90 domestic payment schemes and more than 60 card and wallet networks, with the potential to reach approximately 12 billion endpoints, through approximately 4 billion cards, bank accounts and digital wallets, respectively. In fiscal 2025, Visa Direct processed more than 12.5 billion transactions for more than 650 partners.
Through Visa+, we aim to provide simplified reach and delivery of funds through alias-linked accounts and wallets, giving flexibility and additional choices to consumers when receiving payments. Visa+ does not require users to have a Visa card; instead, it is based on an alias credential that is linked to their participating payment apps.
Value-Added Services
VAS represents approximately a $520 billion annual revenue opportunity(4) for us to diversify our revenue with products and solutions that help our clients and partners optimize their performance, differentiate their offerings and create better experiences for their consumers. Our comprehensive suite of value-added services spans four portfolios: Issuing Solutions, Acceptance Solutions, Risk and Security Solutions and Advisory and Other Services, which represent approximately $125 billion, $95 billion, $150 billion and $150 billion, respectively, of our overall $520 billion annual revenue opportunity in VAS.
Our VAS strategy, aimed at deepening our partnerships, has three areas of focus: (1) enhance Visa payments by making the Visa network easier to access, more attractive and more secure, increasing yield per transaction; (2) enable all payments by providing access and managing experiences for A2A, alternative payment methods and other card schemes; and (3) go beyond payments by helping clients optimize their payments businesses and achieve multiplier effects. We have made significant progress across each of these areas and offer more than 200 products and services as of September 30, 2025, many of which are designed to work together to deliver high-impact business outcomes.
(4) Visa analysis based on third-party studies as of 2024.
Issuing Solutions
The largest division under our Issuing Solutions business is our Cardholder Engagement solutions, which provide issuers with benefits including airport lounge access, dining reservations, shopping experiences, event tickets, seller offers and access to unique experiences with the goal of driving engagement and spend on Visa payment credentials. We provide a range of other services and digital solutions to issuers, such as account controls, digital issuance and branded consumer experiences. In addition, Visa offers loyalty and benefits solutions to issuers aimed at creating compelling and differentiated cardholder experiences, as well as Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) capabilities, which allow shoppers the flexibility to pay for a purchase in equal payments over a defined period of time. Visa is investing in installments as a payments strategy by offering Visa payment credentials and BNPL solutions to issuers and fintechs.
In Cardholder Experiences, we cover a wide variety of use cases enabling issuers to offer payment experiences to their consumers, which in turn can help drive higher engagement and spend on Visa payment credentials. Our digital enablement solutions help issuers build and deploy new functionalities to their account holders, such as our subscription manager solution that offers an issuer’s consumers enhanced visibility into card-on-file transactions and the ability to manage or discontinue recurring payments. In addition, our Smarter Stand-In Processing uses AI to authorize transactions on behalf of issuers in the event of system outages or maintenance, while our digital enablement solutions allow issuers to easily build and deploy new functionalities for their customers.
Our last two solutions are Issuer Processing and Core Banking, which are primarily delivered by our Visa DPS and Pismo platforms. Visa DPS is a large issuer processor of multi-network transactions, which also provides a wide range of value-added services, including fraud mitigation, dispute management, data analytics, campaign management, a suite of digital solutions and contact center services. Our capabilities in API-based issuer processing solutions, such as DPS Forward, allow our clients to create new payments use cases and provide them with modular capabilities for digital payments. Finally, Pismo’s technology platform provides core banking and card-issuer processing capabilities across credit, debit and prepaid payment credentials via cloud native APIs. It also provides core banking, support and connectivity for emerging payment frameworks and RTP networks for financial institution clients.
Acceptance Solutions
Visa Acceptance Solutions provide modular, value-added services in addition to the traditional gateway function of connecting sellers to payment processing, as well as secure, reliable services for sellers and acquirers that help reduce friction and drive acceptance. Our Network Products represent a suite of solutions designed to enhance Visa transactions for sellers and acquirers. For example, our account verification service checks for invalid or compromised payment credentials before a purchase to help prevent fraud. In addition, our Account Updater provides updated account information for sellers to help strengthen customer relationships and retention.
Using the Visa Acceptance Platform, acquirers, payment service providers, independent software vendors and sellers can improve the way their consumers engage and transact, while helping to mitigate fraud and lower operational costs. These solutions enable them to enhance, complement or supplement their existing payment services to adapt to changing business requirements. Built on a cloud-based architecture, our Acceptance Platform solutions such as Cybersource and Authorize.net provide new and enhanced omnichannel payment integrations with ecommerce platforms, enabling sellers and acquirers to provide tailored commerce experiences with seamlessly embedded payments tools. Token Management Service, another example, helps simplify network token adoption, offers access and management for seller and acquiring clients, provides a single integration point into major card networks and is used standalone or easily integrated into other payment solutions For more information, see the Token Technology discussion above.
Our Post-Purchase solutions include a network-agnostic solution from Verifi that enables sellers to prevent and resolve disputes on a single platform as well as dispute tools for issuers and acquirers like Visa Resolve Online.
Risk and Security Solutions
Visa’s Risk and Security Solutions offer risk detection and prevention solutions underpinned by real-time AI-driven scores. These solutions are increasingly becoming payment-type and card-network agnostic. We transform data into insights for near real-time decisions and facilitate account holder authentication to help financial institutions and seller clients prevent fraud and protect account holder data. Transaction Risk includes the Visa Protect suite of solutions with a range of products that empower financial institutions and sellers with tools that facilitate automation, simplify fraud prevention and enhance payment security, such as Visa Consumer Authentication Service, Visa Advanced Authorization and Visa Provisioning Intelligence. These offerings highlight our AI and machine learning capabilities. For example, Visa Consumer Authentication Service provides an AI-powered, real-time, network-agnostic risk score that enables clients to reduce fraud and false declines for intelligent authentication decisions. Visa Advanced Authorization uses machine learning algorithms to help identify fraud for Visa card payments and Visa Provisioning Intelligence is an AI-powered risk score designed to help prevent tokens from being fraudulently provisioned.
Visa also has products in the Visa Protect suite that are designed to reduce fraud across immediate A2A and ecommerce payments, as well as transactions both on and off Visa’s network. Visa Deep Authorization is an AI-powered transaction risk scoring solution tailored to better manage ecommerce payments, which strengthens the protection of Visa’s transactions through transaction risk scoring. Visa Protect for A2A Payments is our first fraud prevention solution built specifically for real-time non-card payments. Finally, Visa Risk Manager with network-agnostic Visa Advanced Authorization is a comprehensive AI-powered fraud risk management solution. Visa’s value-added fraud prevention tools layer on top of a suite of our network programs that protect the safety and integrity of the payment ecosystem, and help to prevent, detect and mitigate threats. In addition, Visa's Cybersource Decision Manager helps our seller and acquirer clients manage and reduce fraud in payments acceptance.
In Authentication solutions, we offer a range of authentication and transaction risk solutions to help acquirers and sellers identify customers and limit fraud across multiple payment methods and sales channels. Meanwhile, our Cybersecurity solutions provide risk mitigation against newer threats such as enumeration and device protection. For example, clients use the Visa Account Attack Intelligence Score to make more informed decisions around enumeration transaction blocking. In December 2024, we expanded our Risk and Security Solutions offerings by acquiring Featurespace, a developer of real-time behavioral analytics and AI-powered payments protection technology that helps prevent and mitigate payments fraud and financial crime risks.
Advisory and Other Services
Visa Advisory Services offers deep payments expertise through a global consulting practice, proprietary analytics models, data scientists and economists, marketing services and managed services to deliver insights for issuers, acquirers, sellers, fintechs and other partners that help them optimize business decisions and scale their operations. Operating as the payments consulting arm of Visa, Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA) utilizes our payments expertise and economic intelligence to identify actionable insights, make recommendations and help implement solutions. VCA is comprised of specialized advisory practices such as strategy and commercial money movement, portfolio optimization, digital, AI, stablecoin, cybersecurity, risk and implementation support, which drive measurable outcomes for our clients. VCA Implementation Services embeds teams within client organizations to help execute key initiatives.
Visa Marketing Services offers a full suite of solutions that spans across the entire campaign lifecycle. This includes research, strategy, campaign design, execution and measurement. We bring customized solutions to Visa clients with unique activation opportunities with Visa’s sponsorships, and we utilize our data analytics and understanding of consumers’ transactional behavior to provide marketing solutions designed to deliver effective results, drive brand preference and influence consumer behavior. Our Data Solutions suite uses Visa transaction data to help clients analyze and improve performance across a range of areas, including consumer spend, peer benchmarking and fraud performance. For example, Visa Analytics Platform is a web-based, self-service analytics solution that provides customizable views of payments data and insights to a broad range of clients.
In addition, through our open banking platform, Tink, we continue to accelerate the development and adoption of open banking securely and at scale. Visa’s open banking capabilities range from data access use cases, such as account verification, balance check and personal finance management, to payment initiation capabilities, such as A2A transactions and seller payments. These capabilities can help our partner businesses deliver valuable services
to their customers. In fiscal 2025, we launched Visa A2A in the UK, an open system bringing standards, rules and a dispute management service to eligible banks and businesses, enabling them to provide consumers with a more streamlined bill payment experience. Key features include increased protection, more optionality by allowing consumers to pay directly from their bank accounts and enhanced controls over payment permissions.
Looking Ahead
As commerce evolves, so do buyer and seller preferences and to fulfill our purpose, we develop and deploy solutions that enable our expanding network of partners to meet and exceed the needs of their users as we build the future of payments across our three growth pillars. Two examples of this include our agentic commerce and stablecoin efforts.
Our token infrastructure enables expansion into emerging payments use cases, including autonomous and agentic commerce. Visa Intelligent Commerce is an innovative offering in this space that integrates Visa’s tokenization technology with authentication and predictive analytics, empowering partners to deploy secure, personalized commerce experiences. The platform comprises a suite of integrated APIs, including tokenized payment credentials with authentication for agent-driven transactions, AI-powered personalization services using Visa transaction insights to optimize search and commerce recommendations and intelligent payment processing with authenticated payment instructions and contextual signals. These capabilities are supported by a commercial partner program for platforms and developers, providing the tools and infrastructure to deploy AI-driven commerce solutions securely and at scale. Additionally, these APIs are accessible through our MCP server, connecting AI systems to Visa’s payment network infrastructure and Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, which enables safer agent-driven checkout by helping sellers verify agents and malicious bots, utilizing existing web infrastructure. In 2025, we deployed a pilot program that processed live agentic token transactions within the ecommerce and enterprise environments.
We see opportunity for stablecoins in two important areas: emerging markets where the local fiat currency is volatile and/or where consumers do not have easy or affordable access to U.S. dollars; and cross-border money movement, through both B2B payments and consumer remittances. We have provided both the on-ramp and off-ramp platform for buying and spending crypto assets and stablecoins through cards. Since 2020, Visa has facilitated the purchase of over $100 billion worth of crypto and stablecoin assets and we have facilitated the spend of more than $35 billion in crypto and stablecoin assets through crypto-linked Visa payment credentials. We are also developing cross-border money movement capabilities for P2P and B2B in certain emerging markets. As part of this initiative, we are building out a full stack stablecoin platform with integrations into leading stablecoin issuers and payment platforms across the world that enable Visa to access, redeem, convert and transfer stablecoins. We believe that these offerings have the potential to leverage the advantages of stablecoins, including enhancing the speed, cost efficiency and transparency of cross-border money movement as transactions can settle quickly seven days a week. We continue to expand our stablecoin settlement activities, enabling support for four stablecoins and four blockchains. This serves as an extension of our Visa treasury infrastructure, which already facilitates settlement in more than 25 traditional fiat currencies. As of September 30, 2025, stablecoin settlement volume surpassed a $2.5 billion annualized run rate. In addition, in September 2025, we announced a stablecoin prefunding pilot targeting banks, remitters and financial institutions seeking faster, more flexible ways to manage liquidity. Such clients will have the ability to pre-fund Visa Direct with stablecoins to cover payouts. We treat these stablecoins equivalent to funds on deposit available for payout in fiat currency. Lastly, we are enabling banks to issue and manage their own stablecoins through the Visa Tokenized Asset Platform.
We are fortifying the key foundations of our business model, which consist of our brand, product innovation, platforms and security, government affairs, sales and service and talent and people, in order to execute our strategy and deliver our purpose.
Brand
Visa’s strong brand helps deliver added value to financial institutions, sellers and partners through compelling brand expressions, a wide range of products and services as well as innovative brand and marketing efforts. In line with our commitment to an expansive and diverse range of partnerships for the benefit of our stakeholders, Visa is a sponsor of top entertainment and sports events including the FIFA World Cup 2026TM, the Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Super Bowl.
Product Innovation
We are focused on our product innovation to build new capabilities and enhance our existing solutions. For companies that want to be in the money movement or payments business, they can build on top of the Visa as a Service stack in order to connect billions of buyers and sellers through secure and seamless digital payments. We believe this scale and reach will continue to drive innovative forms of commerce and support Visa’s long-term growth.
Platforms and Security
Our technology platforms form the backbone of what Visa does and provide security, reliability, uptime and operational excellence, all while fueling our product development and innovation. Visa’s leading technology platforms comprise software, hardware, data centers and a large telecommunications infrastructure. Visa’s four global data centers are a critical part of our global processing environment and have a high redundancy of network connectivity, power and cooling designed to provide continuous availability of systems.
Our in-depth, multi-layer security approach includes a formal program to devalue sensitive and/or personal data through various cryptographic means; embedded security in the software development lifecycle; identity and access management controls to protect against unauthorized access; and advanced cyber detection and response capabilities. We use information security tools that help keep our clients and consumers safe and invest significantly in our comprehensive approach to cybersecurity. We deploy information security technologies to protect data confidentiality, the integrity of our network and service availability and to strengthen our core cybersecurity capabilities to minimize risk. Our payments ecosystem risk and control team continually monitors threats to the payments ecosystem to help ensure attacks are detected and prevented efficiently and effectively through the pairing of our AI capabilities with our security experts.
Government Affairs
Our team of Government Affairs professionals engage with governments across the more than 200 countries and territories where Visa operates. Our Government Affairs team seeks to proactively influence the policy and regulatory landscape to expand our business and support Visa’s mission of uplifting everyone, everywhere, by being the best way to pay and be paid. The team plays a crucial role in creating opportunities to expand access to digital payments and shape public policy that empowers governments, businesses and individual consumers to succeed. Visa actively works with governments, officials, policymakers and stakeholders to shape the future of digital payments. We also leverage our country managers around the world who are deeply connected with the governments where we operate. Our engagement is as important as it has ever been, and we have a proven track record of partnering with governments to advance digitization of payments and shape regulatory policies. Through our work with governments, we foster innovation and find opportunities to drive digital transformation and further enable access to financial services.
Sales and Service
Our Sales and Service teams are the vital link between Visa and our clients, delivering innovative, data-driven solutions that enable secure digital commerce. As the first point of contact for our clients, our Sales and Service teams help our clients grow by providing services that anticipate and meet their needs and drive tangible business results.
Talent and People
Attracting, developing and advancing the best talent globally is critical to our continued success. This year, we grew our total workforce from approximately 31,600 in fiscal 2024 to approximately 34,100 employees in fiscal 2025, an increase of 8% year-over-year. As of September 30, 2025, our voluntary workforce turnover (rolling 12-month attrition) was approximately 6%. Visa employees are located in 86 countries and territories, with more than 60% located outside the U.S.
As Visa strives to achieve our purpose and our growth objectives, we have focused on enhancing our employees’ expertise across our business. We offer unique career pathways for employees and provide them with tools and support to build on their leadership impact and develop their careers. Along with our educational assistance program and Visa University learning pathways, employees are encouraged to broaden their knowledge and develop new skills by participating in leadership development programs (e.g., New to Visa People Leadership). Visa’s commitment to innovation and collaboration is reflected in how we equip employees with GenAI capabilities that can enhance content creation, productivity and business automation. At the heart of this effort is our internal GenAI hub that serves as an easy-to-access entry point to AI models, applications and developer tools available to Visa employees. The GenAI Hub brings together Visa’s chatbots, apps and internal platforms, enabling AI to be a driver of everyday decision making and problem solving. Additionally, Visa’s own AI assistant for employees connects knowledge across Visa’s systems and uses agentic AI to empower employees with fast self-service solutions. From its launch in March 2025 through the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025, it has been embraced by nearly 26,000 employees launching over 261,000 AI-powered chats to get answers, automate tasks and accelerate outcomes.
We are committed to providing benefits that support our employees. As part of our inclusive “whole person” approach to benefits, Visa offers a robust package of curated tools, resources and benefits for our employees. While programs vary by location, some of our financial benefits include retirement savings, employee stock purchase plan and financial well-being sessions and resources. We also expanded our mental health first aid training and continued to grow our peer-to-peer ambassador network to strengthen our well-being support and culture of community for employees in addition to our enhanced mental well-being benefits.
We are also dedicated to ensuring that employees feel valued in their day-to-day work. In recent years, Visa has prioritized and invested in employee recognition, which in turn drives engagement and innovation. Our UPLIFT program enables employees to recognize, appreciate and celebrate each other, no matter their role or level. In fiscal 2025, users with active participation in the UPLIFT platform as a percentage of all users remained strong at 76%.The UPLIFT program also drives Visa’s culture by grounding the recognition categories in our Visa Leadership Principles (VLPs), further reinforcing that at Visa, it is not only about what you achieve, but how you do it.
Based on our latest employee engagement survey, 85% of employees would recommend Visa as a great place to work. We strive to put our people first and continually seek ways to enhance our robust culture in which everyone upholds our VLPs, which are at the heart of everything we do. We conducted a digital campaign to integrate the VLPs in fresh, creative ways across the employee experience. We also launched tools to help leaders across all levels of the company communicate more openly and transparently, with actionable and practical tips that managers can incorporate day to day, especially when leading through change. We created a new digital People Leader Hub to engage people leaders on major initiatives and help them easily access resources and timely information.
We also invest in our internal channels to ensure that employees feel closely connected to one another and to our business at large. Viva Engage, our internal social network, is visited by 95% of employees at least once a month, with 89% reading six or more posts a month. This year we also modernized our corporate intranet to enable the integration of GenAI tools as well as content tailored to the individual user. For additional information regarding our human capital management, please see the section titled “People and Talent Management” in Visa’s 2025 Proxy Statement as well as our website at visa.com/crs, which includes our 2024 Consolidated EEO-1 Report and our 2024 Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability (CRS) Report. See Available Information below.
MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS, JOINT VENTURES AND STRATEGIC INVESTMENTS
Visa continually explores opportunities to augment our capabilities and provide meaningful value to our clients. Mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and strategic investments complement our internal development and enhance our partnerships to align with Visa’s priorities. Visa applies a rigorous business analysis to our acquisitions, joint ventures and investments to ensure they will differentiate our network, provide value-added services and accelerate growth.
In fiscal 2024, we completed our acquisition of Pismo, a global cloud-native issuer processing and core banking platform with operations in Latin America, Asia Pacific and Europe, and we entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a majority interest in Prosa, a leading payments processor in Mexico. After closing, Prosa will continue to operate as an independent company. The Prosa acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including applicable regulatory approvals. In fiscal 2025, we completed our acquisition of Featurespace, a developer of real-time artificial intelligence payments protection technology that helps prevent and mitigate payments fraud and financial crime risks.
CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY
Visa is committed to operating as a responsible, ethical, inclusive and sustainable company. As a trusted network and global leader in digital payments, Visa strives to join with clients, partners and other stakeholders to empower people, businesses and communities to thrive. Visa’s purpose is to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid. While we work toward this goal, we are committed to managing the risks and opportunities that arise from environmental and social issues and providing strong executive and Board oversight of our overall strategy. Our 2024 CRS Report, as well as other CRS-related resources are available in the CRS Resources section of our corporate website at corporate.visa.com/en/about-visa/crs/resources.html. See Available Information below.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
We own and manage the Visa brand, which stands for acceptance, security, convenience, speed and reliability. Our portfolio of Visa-owned trademarks is important to our business. Generally, trademark registrations are valid indefinitely as long as they are in use and/or maintained. We give our clients access to these assets through agreements with our issuers and acquirers, which authorize the use of our trademarks in connection with their participation in our payments network. Additionally, we own many patents and patent applications related to our business and continue to pursue patents in emerging technologies that may have applications in our business. We rely on a combination of patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret laws in the U.S. and other jurisdictions, as well as confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions, to protect our proprietary technology.
COMPETITION
The global payments industry continues to undergo dynamic and rapid change. Existing and emerging competitors compete with Visa’s network and payment solutions for consumers and for participation by financial institutions and sellers. Technology and innovation are shifting consumer habits and driving growth opportunities in ecommerce, GenAI agent-based commerce, mobile payments, blockchain technology and digital currencies, including stablecoins. These advances are enabling new entrants, many of which depart from traditional network payment models. In certain countries, the evolving regulatory landscape is creating local networks or enabling additional processing competition.
We compete against all forms of payment. These include paper-based payments, primarily cash and checks, and all forms of electronic payments. Our electronic payment competitors principally include the ones listed below.
Global or Multi-regional Networks: These networks typically offer a range of branded, general purpose card payment products that consumers can use at millions of merchant locations around the world. Examples include American Express, Diners Club/Discover (now owned by Capital One), JCB, Mastercard and UnionPay. These competitors may be more concentrated in specific geographic regions, such as Discover in the U.S. and JCB in Japan, or have a leading position in certain countries, such as UnionPay in China. See Item 1A—Regulatory Risks—Government-imposed obligations and/or restrictions on international payments systems may prevent us from competing against providers in certain countries, including significant markets such as China and India. Based on available data, Visa is one of the largest retail electronic funds transfer networks used throughout the world.
The following chart compares our network with certain network competitors for calendar year 2024(1):
VisaAmerican ExpressDiners Club / DiscoverJCBMastercard
Payments Volume ($B)13,433 1,750 253 319 8,014
Total Volume ($B)(2)
15,927 1,765 266 327 9,757
Total Transactions (B)311 12 4 7 204
Cards (M)4,805 147 72 167 3,146
(1)American Express, Diners Club / Discover, JCB and Mastercard data sourced from The Nilson Report issue 1288 (June 2025). Includes all consumer, small business and commercial credit, debit and prepaid cards for Visa and Mastercard and includes all consumer, small business and commercial credit cards, including business from third-party issuers, for American Express, Diners Club / Discover, and JCB. JCB figures include other payment-related products and some figures are estimates. Mastercard excludes Maestro and Cirrus figures.
(2)Total volume is the sum of payments volume and cash volume. Cash volume generally consists of cash access transactions, balance access transactions, balance transfers and convenience checks.
Local and Regional Networks: Operated in many countries, these networks often have the support of government influence or mandate. In some cases, they are owned by financial institutions or payment processors.
These networks typically focus on debit payment products, and may have strong local acceptance and recognizable brands. Examples include NYCE, Pulse and STAR in the U.S.; Interac in Canada; and eftpos in Australia.
Alternative Payments Providers: These providers, such as closed commerce ecosystems, BNPL solutions and cryptocurrency platforms (including stablecoins), often have a primary focus of enabling payments through ecommerce and mobile channels; however, they are expanding or may expand their offerings to the physical point of sale. These companies may process payments using in-house account transfers between parties, electronic funds transfer networks like the ACH, global or local networks like Visa, or some combination of the foregoing. In some cases, these entities can be both a partner and a competitor to Visa.
RTP Networks: RTP networks have launched in at least 80 countries and continue to be driven by strong government sponsorship and regulatory initiatives to enable and drive adoption (e.g., FedNow in the U.S., PIX in Brazil and United Payments Interface (UPI) in India), increasing their position as an alternative to payment card schemes. These networks primarily focus on domestic transactions, with adoption varying by use cases and geographies. However, with linkages such as PayNow in Singapore and UPI in India, cross-border RTP networks are advancing and will compete with our cross-border business. RTP networks can compete with Visa on consumer payments and other payment flows (e.g., B2B and P2P) but can also be customers for value-added services, such as risk management.
Digital Wallet Providers: Digital wallet providers continue to expand payment capabilities in person and online for consumers and sellers and provide consumers with additional ways to pay. While digital wallets can help drive Visa volumes, they can also be funded by non-card payment options. Digital wallet providers who utilize RTP networks provide additional competition.
Payment Processors: Payment processors may perform processing services on third-party payments networks on behalf of issuers or acquirers. We compete with payment processors for the processing of Visa transactions. These processors may benefit from mandates requiring them to handle processing under local regulation. For example, as a result of the Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) in Europe, we may face competition from other networks, processors and other third parties who could process Visa transactions directly with issuers and acquirers.
CMS Providers: We compete with alternative solutions to our CMS (e.g., Visa Direct) such as ACH, RTP and wires. We compete with other global and local card networks for commercial card portfolios. Additionally, we may face competition from industry players who are experimenting with B2B blockchain payments, including stablecoins, which are gaining regulatory clarity, can operate globally 24/7, and have the capability to support cross-border transactions.
Value-Added Service Providers: We face competition from companies that provide alternatives to our value-added services. These include a wide range of players, such as technology companies, information services and consulting firms, governments and merchant services companies. The integration of technology like GenAI can create new and better offerings that compete with our value-added services, such as strengthened risk monitoring and managing digital identification. Regulatory initiatives could also lead to increased competition in these areas.
We believe our fundamental value proposition of security, convenience, speed and reliability as well as the number of payment credentials and our acceptance footprint help us to succeed. In addition, we understand the needs of the individual markets in which we operate and partner with local financial institutions, sellers, fintechs, governments, NGOs and business organizations to provide tailored and innovative solutions. We will continue to utilize our network of networks strategy to facilitate the movement of money. We believe Visa is well-positioned competitively due to our global brand, our broad set of payment products, CMS offerings and value-added services and our proven track record of processing payment transactions securely and reliably.
GOVERNMENT REGULATION
As a global payments technology company, we are subject to complex and evolving global regulations in the various jurisdictions in which our products and services are used. The most significant government regulations that impact our business are discussed below. For further discussion of how global regulations may impact our business, see Item 1A—Regulatory Risks.
Anti-Corruption, Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism and Sanctions: We are subject to anti-corruption laws and regulations, including the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the UK Bribery Act and other laws that generally prohibit the making or offering of improper payments to foreign government officials and political
figures for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business or to gain an unfair business advantage. We are also subject to anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing laws and regulations, including the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act. In addition, we are subject to economic and trade sanctions programs administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the U.S. Therefore, we do not permit financial institutions or other entities that are domiciled in countries or territories subject to comprehensive OFAC trade sanctions (currently, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Crimea and the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic regions of Ukraine), or that are included on OFAC’s list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons, to issue or acquire Visa cards or engage in transactions using our products and services.
Government-imposed Market Participation Restrictions: Certain governments, including China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and South Africa, have taken actions to promote domestic payments systems and/or certain issuers, payments networks or processors, by imposing regulations that favor domestic providers, impose local ownership requirements on processors, require data localization or mandate that domestic processing be done in that country.
Interchange Rates and Fees: An increasing number of jurisdictions around the world regulate or influence debit and credit interchange reimbursement rates in their regions. For example, the U.S. Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Act (Dodd-Frank Act) limits interchange reimbursement rates for certain debit card transactions in the U.S.; the European Union (EU) Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) limits interchange rates in the European Economic Area (EEA) (as discussed below); and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) regulates average permissible levels of interchange.
Internet Transactions: Many jurisdictions have adopted regulations that require payments system participants to monitor, identify, filter, restrict or take other actions with regard to certain types of payment transactions on the Internet, such as gambling, digital currencies, the purchase of cigarettes or alcohol and other controversial transaction types.
Network Exclusivity and Routing: In the U.S., the Dodd-Frank Act limits network exclusivity and restrictions on seller routing choice for the debit and prepaid market segments. Other jurisdictions impose similar limitations, such as the IFR’s prohibition in Europe on restrictions that prevent multiple payment brands or functionality on the same card.
No-surcharge Rules: We have historically enforced rules that prohibit sellers from charging higher prices to consumers who pay using Visa products instead of other means. However, sellers’ ability to surcharge varies by geographic market as well as Visa product type, and continues to be impacted by litigation, regulation and legislation.
Privacy, Data Use, AI and Cybersecurity: Aspects of our operations or business are subject to increasingly complex and fragmented data-related regulations, including with respect to privacy, data use, AI and cybersecurity, which impact the way we collect, use and handle data, operate our products and services and even impact our ability to offer a product or service. In addition, legislatures and regulators globally are proposing new laws or regulations on these topics that could require Visa to adopt more restrictive data collection and processing practices; expand cybersecurity requirements; limit cross-border data flows; impact the adoption of advanced AI systems; and impose increased obligations on companies handling personal data.
Supervisory Oversight of the Payments Industry: Visa is subject to financial sector oversight and regulation in substantially all of the jurisdictions in which we operate. In the U.S., for example, the Federal Banking Agencies (FBA) have supervisory oversight over Visa under applicable federal banking laws and policies as a technology service provider to U.S. financial institutions. The federal banking agencies comprising the FBA are the Federal Reserve Board, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the National Credit Union Administration. Visa may also be separately examined by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as a service provider to the banks that issue Visa-branded consumer credit and debit card products. Central banks in other countries/regions, including Canada, Europe, India, Ukraine and the UK (as discussed below), have recognized or designated Visa as a retail payment system under various types of financial stability regulations. Visa is also subject to oversight by banking and financial sector authorities in other jurisdictions, such as Brazil and Hong Kong.
European and United Kingdom Regulations and Supervisory Oversight: Visa in Europe continues to be subject to complex and evolving regulation in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the UK.
There are several EU regulations that impact our business. As discussed above, the IFR regulates interchange rates within the EEA, requires Visa Europe to separate its payment card scheme activities from processing activities for accounting, organization and decision-making purposes within the EEA, and imposes limitations on network exclusivity and routing. National competent authorities in the EEA are responsible for monitoring and enforcing the IFR in their markets. We are also subject to regulations governing areas such as privacy and data protection, anti-bribery, anti-money laundering, anti-terrorism and sanctions. Other regulations in Europe, such as the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), require, among other things, that our financial institution clients provide certain customer account access rights to emerging non-financial institution players. PSD2 also includes strong customer authentication requirements for certain transactions that could impose both operational complexity on Visa and impact consumer payment experiences. Visa Europe is also subject to supervisory oversight by the European Central Bank and certain competent authorities in Europe.
In the UK, Visa Europe is designated as a Recognized Payment System, bringing it within the scope of the Bank of England’s supervisory powers and subjecting it to various requirements, including on issues such as governance and risk management designed to maintain the stability of the UK’s financial system. Visa Europe is also regulated by the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), which has wide-ranging powers and authority to review our business practices, systems, rules and fees with respect to promoting competition and innovation in the UK, and ensuring payment systems take care of, and promote, the interests of service users. The PSR established a supervisory team to specifically oversee payment system operators like Visa in the aforementioned areas. Post-Brexit, the UK has adopted various European regulations, including regulations that impact the payments ecosystem, such as the IFR and PSD2. The PSR is responsible for monitoring Visa Europe’s compliance with the IFR as adopted in the UK.
Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability: Certain governments around the world are adopting laws and regulations pertaining to corporate responsibility and sustainability performance, transparency and reporting. Regulations may include mandated corporate reporting (e.g., Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) or in individual areas, such as mandated reporting on climate-related financial disclosures.
Additional Regulatory Developments: Various regulatory agencies across the world also continue to examine a wide variety of other issues, including mobile payment transactions, tokenization, access rights for non-financial institutions, money transfer services, identity theft, account management guidelines, disclosure rules, security and marketing that could affect our financial institution clients and our business. Furthermore, following the passage of PSD2 in Europe, several countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong and Mexico, are contemplating granting or have already granted various types of access rights to third-party processors, including access to consumer account data maintained by our financial institution clients. In October 2024, the CFPB in the U.S. issued a final rule on personal financial data rights that would provide consumers (and third parties authorized by consumers) with access to consumers’ financial data. While the regulatory status of the CFPB’s rule is uncertain, all these changes have the potential to change the competitive landscape, which would present new challenges and opportunities to our business.
AVAILABLE INFORMATION
Our corporate website is corporate.visa.com. Our annual reports on Form 10-K, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, our current reports on Form 8-K, proxy statements and any amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934 can be viewed at sec.gov and our investor relations website at investor.visa.com as soon as reasonably practicable after these materials are electronically filed with or furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In addition, we routinely post financial and other information, which could be deemed to be material to investors, on our investor relations website. Information regarding our corporate responsibility and sustainability initiatives is also available on our website at corporate.visa.com/en/about-visa/crs/resources.html. The content of any of our websites referred to in this report is not incorporated by reference into this report or any other filings with the SEC.