Visa Inc - Class A (V) — Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Visa's fiscal first quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining us today are Ryan McInerney, Visa's Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Suh, Visa's Chief Financial Officer. This call is being webcast on the Investor Relations section of our website at investor.visa.com. A replay will be archived on our site for 30 days. A slide deck containing financial and statistical highlights has been posted on our IR website. Let me also remind you that this presentation includes forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and our actual results could differ materially as a result of many factors. Additional information concerning those factors is available in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K, which you can find on the SEC's website and the Investor Relations section of our website. Our comments today regarding our financial results will reflect revenue on a GAAP basis and all other results on a non-GAAP nominal basis unless otherwise noted. The related GAAP measures and reconciliation are available in today's earnings release and related materials available on our IR website. And with that, let me turn the call over to Ryan.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge last night's tragic air collision in Washington, DC. Our hearts go out to all those affected by this terrible event, particularly the families and friends of the victims. Turning now to our results. We had a strong start to our fiscal year with $9.5 billion in net revenue, up 10% year-over-year, and EPS up 14%. Our key business drivers improved from the fourth quarter. In constant dollars, overall payments volume grew 9% year-over-year, US payments volume grew 7%, and international payments volume grew 11%. Cross-border volume excluding Intra-Europe rose 16% in constant dollars, and processed transactions grew 11% year-over-year. Our strategy across consumer payments, new flows, and value-added services continues to resonate with our clients and is reflected in our business results. Back in February 2020, when we articulated our strategy, our total first quarter volume on our network had just crossed $3 trillion. Just five years later, our total quarterly volume was above $4 trillion. At the same time, CEMEA and Latin America had more volume from people using their cards to get cash than to make payments. Five years later, as a result of double-digit constant dollar payments volume growth in both regions, the situation has flipped and we now have more than 60% of our volume from digital payments. I'm looking forward to our Investor Day next month to discuss our strategy and our plans for future growth. For now, let's look at some of the quarterly highlights that have helped to deliver this impressive progress. In consumer payments, we now have 4.7 billion credentials, up 7% year-over-year, and 12.6 billion tokens, up 44% year-over-year. We continue to grow our credentials in an increasingly digital world. Interest in our Visa Flexible Credential continues to grow. We have now launched with the Affirm Card in the US, expanded the funding options with SMCC in Japan by adding small business cards and announced a multi-currency solution with fintech Liv in the UAE. Tap to Add Card is now live in the US for nearly 60% of all Visa consumer credit and debit cards. Since the launch, millions have added their cards to their wallets by tapping, eliminating the overwhelming majority of provisioning fraud as compared to manual entry into a phone. And 74% of all face-to-face transactions are now Tap to Pay. A few countries I would like to call out: Japan, where Tap to Pay penetration grew 20 percentage points since last year to 44%; Argentina, where Tap to Pay penetration was up 22 percentage points to 78%; and the US, where it was up 13 percentage points to 57%. Several key initiatives contributed to the growth in these countries, including targeted marketing campaigns, the launch of transit acceptance in certain cities, and increased issuance of Tap to Pay-enabled credentials. Finally, Tap to Phone is now live in 118 markets, and in the last year, the number of phones enabled has more than doubled and the number of transactions has more than tripled. Now, let me turn to a few deal highlights from across the globe. First, in Mainland China, we renewed our partnership with ICBC, the largest bank in the world in terms of assets and the biggest credit card issuer in Mainland China in terms of number of cards. In India, we renewed our long-standing credit agreement with ICICI Bank, SBI Card, and Kotak Mahindra Bank, three of our largest issuers in the country with a focus on growing affluent and cross-border volume. We also renewed our debit agreement with Kotak Mahindra Bank. Also in our Asia-Pacific region, we signed a long-term renewal with Bank of New Zealand, one of the largest banks in the country across consumer debit, consumer credit, and business credit. In Argentina and Uruguay, we renewed our portfolios with Santander for a long-term agreement with a focus on growing affluent. Also in Latin America, we have deepened our partnership with BAC to grow acceptance with a goal to enable 300,000 nano and small merchants and to grow in new verticals. We also won the issuance of their largely cross-border credit portfolio, Millas Plus, offering our expertise and value-added services. Similarly, in Brazil, we extended our partnership with digital bank Neon, which includes the launch of a new credit portfolio. We are also pleased to have renewed a pan-European agreement with BNP Paribas, which also includes the winning of additional portfolios in France and Belgium. When we talk about the total addressable opportunity in consumer payments, we often talk about the opportunity to win share from domestic networks. And we are continuing to have success converting credentials from domestic networks to Visa. In Bangladesh, we secured nearly 6 million credentials with Dutch-Bangla Bank from their closed-loop system. And Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, the largest issuer and acquirer in Puerto Rico, renewed a multi-year credit and debit partnership with Visa that aims to expand digital penetration in the country through the launch of new products, including a co-badge card with a local network. And we've renewed our business with RBC Royal Bank in 10 countries across the Caribbean, and we also expanded our relationship to include the transfer of debit credentials in the Dutch Caribbean to Visa and are supporting the development of new credit and commercial products. And co-brand cards remain a key area of strength for us and this quarter was no exception. In India, we launched two very important cards. First, the Times Black ICICI Bank credit card, catering to high-net-worth individuals with travel and lifestyle benefits. Second, the HSBC Taj credit card, India's first premium co-branded hospitality credit card. In our CEMEA region, we signed with real estate developer, investor, and manager Aldar for a co-brand card for its Darna Rewards by Aldar loyalty program in the UAE with issuing bank Emirates NBD. We also launched a new co-brand card in Saudi Arabia with Alrajhi Bank, and Marriott Bonvoy, the global travel program by Marriott International. In the airline category, we won the portfolio for EGYPTAIR, Africa's second largest airline. We also expanded our business in the SWISS card Miles & More program. And in the retail segment, we signed with Casas Bahia, one of the top retailers in Brazil for co-brand cards, and with Bolt, a leading ride-hailing and food delivery operator in Ukraine. So, through traditional issuance, winning share from domestic networks, and leveraging our brand, products, and innovation to secure important co-brands, our consumer payments business is strong. Now to new flows, where revenue grew 19% year-over-year in constant dollars. Visa Direct has now crossed the 10 billion transaction mark over the last 12 months with nearly 3 billion transactions this quarter. We continue to expand Visa Direct in several ways, one of which is building and deepening partnerships directly with issuers and fintechs. We are excited to partner with X Money for their much-anticipated launch of the X Money account, including P2P payment functionality set for later this year. Through the partnership, X Money will utilize Visa Direct to enable secure and instant funding of their X Wallet with a user's debit card. Users will also have the option to instantly transfer funds back into their bank account via the same debit card. This quarter, we signed an agreement with OnePay, a fintech company with more than 3 million monthly active users for Visa Direct as the engine for wallet loads. In Ecuador, Banco Pichincha, one of the country's largest issuers, will begin using Visa Direct for cross-border remittance payments. Our broad and deep cross-border capabilities continue to be important differentiators, and this quarter, Libra Internet Bank in Romania launched a real-time multi-currency FX service for their business customers utilizing our Currencycloud solution. In Asia-Pacific, OCBC has launched a cross-border P2P solution on the OCBC app, allowing their customers in Singapore to send money to Chinese wallets using Visa Direct; all they need is the recipient's China national ID name and mobile number. Now, moving to commercial, where volumes were up 6% year-over-year this quarter in constant dollars, we had some notable progress in specific verticals. First, in the food and grocery delivery vertical, we had two recent wins. In the US, we are pleased that DoorDash's shopper card program will soon be using Visa Virtual Commercial credit cards to enable Dashers to pay for customer orders at physical merchant outlets. This is in addition to our Visa Direct relationship with DoorDash in the US, Australia, and Canada to enable Dasher payouts. In Brazil, we signed a commercial business card deal for commercial customers of iFood Pago, the fintech for the largest food delivery platform in the country. In the healthcare vertical, we reached a virtual card agreement with an insurtech company in France, mySofie, offering medical policyholders an easy way to pay for their healthcare. In the T&E vertical, we recently renewed and deepened our partnership with Airwallex, a global financial platform enabling more than 150,000 businesses to manage payments and money movement across borders. Today, Visa and Airwallex have live card programs in Australia, Hong Kong, the UK, United States, Canada, Netherlands, and Singapore to enable businesses to easily make digital card payments around the world, and soon, we will be expanding to new geographies across our use cases in expense cards and B2B travel. In both Visa Direct and commercial, we continued to develop innovative new solutions and use cases that helped us retain and secure business. Now to value-added services, where in the first quarter, revenue grew 18% in constant dollars. Across our solutions, we continue to grow revenue as we enhance Visa payments, enable services for all types of payments, and go beyond payments. We often partner with acquirers who utilize Visa's Acceptance Platform to offer their merchant clients compelling solutions. When this happens, we generate revenue on both Visa and non-Visa transactions. Three examples this quarter are European acquirer emerchantpay, Guatemalan acquirer NeoNet, and Paraguayan acquirer Bancard, who will all offer Cybersource to their merchants. We are also partnering with Fiserv to include our Cybersource gateway as a solution for their acquirers and merchants in Europe and Asia-Pacific. This is in addition to Fiserv expanding their use of cardholder authentication from CardinalCommerce to further extend our global partnership into additional Fiserv platforms. In our risk solutions, in 2024, we launched Visa Protect for A2A payments, with plans to expand to 10 new RTP networks in 2025. Powered by AI-based fraud detection models, this new service provides a real-time risk score that can be used to identify fraud on account-to-account payments. We are now piloting the solution with five significant players in Brazil, who represent more than 20% of Pix transactions. We are also very pleased to have closed our acquisition of Featurespace, enabling us to provide an expanded set of fraud prevention tools to our clients and protect consumers in real time across various payment methods. In advisory services, we continue to see strong demand. One example of a recent project is with Alrajhi Bank, where we are expanding our advisory relationship into risk, digital enablement, and data analysis across their portfolios. So, across our value-added services portfolio, we are innovating with new solutions and deepening our partnerships with clients to drive growth. To wrap it up, we began our fiscal year with strong performance, an ever-growing obsession for our clients, and a focus on continued innovation as we build the future of payments. I look forward to seeing you in February at our Investor Day. And now, over to Chris.

Thanks, Ryan. Good afternoon, everyone. Our first quarter results reflected improving underlying drivers and effective execution of our business. In constant dollars, global payments volume was up 9% year-over-year, and cross-border volume, excluding Intra-Europe, was up 16% year-over-year. Processed transactions grew 11% year-over-year. Fiscal first quarter net revenue was up 10%, higher than our expectations, primarily due to strong international transaction revenue and value-added services revenue. Net revenue was up 11% in constant dollars. EPS was up 14% year-over-year and 15% in constant dollars, higher than expected, primarily due to revenue outperformance and a lower-than-expected tax rate. Now, let's go into the details. In the US, total payments volume grew 7% year-over-year, up 2 points from Q4. Credit grew 7% and debit grew 8%. The US benefited from a strong holiday shopping season, which is the period from November 1st through December 31st and the lapping of the impact of Reg II implementations, which had a modest drag in Q1 of last year. In the US, consumer holiday spending growth was in the upper mid-single digits on a year-over-year basis. The consumer categories with the strongest growth were discretionary categories, such as retail, travel, and entertainment. Focusing on retail, holiday spending growth was a couple of points higher than last year, and retail spending growth on key shopping days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday was several points higher. E-commerce was a higher share of retail holiday spending versus last year. In key countries around the globe, we saw similar trends with consumer retail holiday spending growth improving from last year. Moving to international markets, total payments volume was up 11% in constant dollars, up from Q4. In most of our regions, payments volume year-over-year growth rates in constant dollars were strong for the quarter, with Latin America up 22%, CEMEA up 18%, and Europe up 13%. Asia-Pacific payments volume growth saw a slight improvement from Q4 in constant dollars to just above 1% year-over-year for the quarter, reflecting a still somewhat muted macroeconomic environment. Now to cross-border volume, which I'll speak to in constant dollars and excluding Intra-Europe transactions. Total cross-border volume was up 16% year-over-year in Q1, 3 points above Q4. E-commerce, measured as card-not-present volume ex travel, and cross-border travel volume were both up 16% year-over-year for Q1. E-commerce volumes continued to benefit from the strength in retail in part due to the strong holiday shopping season. Travel volumes performed well across our regional corridors due to broader strength in both consumer and commercial spending. Outbound Europe and Asia-Pacific travel volume growth also benefited from solid performance of client portfolios. For the US, both outbound e-commerce and travel volume growth were also helped by the strong dollar. Now, let's review our first-quarter financial results. I'll start with the revenue components. Service revenue grew 8% year-over-year versus the 8% growth in Q4 constant dollars payments volume. Data processing revenue grew 9% versus 11% processed transaction growth, due largely to the back-half loaded 2025 pricing impact that was included in our initial guidance. Had pricing been more evenly spread across the year, as in the prior year, these two growth metrics would have been more in line for the first quarter. International transaction revenue was better than expected, benefiting from higher cross-border volumes and higher currency volatility than we expected. Year-over-year growth was up 14%, below the 16% increase in constant dollar cross-border volume, excluding Intra-Europe, due primarily to foreign exchange and lapping higher currency volatility from last year. Other revenue grew 32%, primarily driven by better-than-expected consulting and marketing services growth and select pricing modifications. Client incentives grew 13%, reflecting a strong renewal quarter. Now to our three growth engines. Consumer payments revenue growth was driven by improving payments volume, cross-border volume, and processed transaction growth. New flows revenue grew 19% year-over-year in constant dollars, driven by better-than-expected commercial cross-border performance across all regions and Visa Direct transaction growth. Commercial payments volume rose 6% year-over-year in constant dollars, mainly driven by favorable days mix impact as well as strong cross-border volumes. Visa Direct transactions grew 34% year-over-year, helped by growth in Latin America for interoperability among P2P apps. Value-added services revenue grew to $2.4 billion, a growth rate of 18% in constant dollars, led by strong growth in consulting and marketing services, issuing solutions, and risk and identity solutions. Operating expenses grew 11%, in line with our expectations, driven by increases in personnel and general and administrative expenses. In our GAAP results, we had $213 million in severance costs related to changes to our workforce, reflecting our efforts to focus investment on the highest growth opportunities for our business as well as accelerating our innovation to better serve our clients. Our tax rate was 17.7%, better than expected due to various items, including a change in our geographic mix of earnings. EPS was $2.75, up 14% over last year, with an approximately 1-point drag from exchange rates and an approximately 0.5-point drag from acquisitions. In Q1, we bought back approximately $3.9 billion in stock and distributed $1.2 billion in dividends to our stockholders. At the end of December, we had $9.1 billion remaining in our buyback authorization. Now, let's move to what we've seen so far in Q2. Through January 28th, driver trends have remained strong. US payments volume was up 8%, with debit up 9% and credit up 7% year-over-year. Processed transactions grew 11% year-over-year. For constant dollar cross-border volume, excluding transactions within Europe, we saw total volume grow 17% year-over-year, travel-related cross-border volume grew 17% year-over-year and cross-border card-not-present ex-travel volume grew 16%. Now, on to our expectations. Remember that adjusted basis is defined as non-GAAP results in constant dollars and excluding acquisition impacts. You can review these disclosures in our earnings presentation for more detail. For the second quarter, we expect adjusted net revenue growth to be in the high-single digits to low-double digits. I would note that the primary difference between Q1 and Q2 adjusted net revenue growth is the lapping of leap year. We expect second-quarter adjusted operating expense growth to be in the high-single to low-double digits. Non-operating income in the second quarter is expected to be negligible. And our tax rate in the second quarter is expected to be around 17.5%. As a result, we expect second-quarter adjusted EPS growth to be in the high-single digits. We have now closed the acquisition of Featurespace and lapped the impact of Pismo in January. For acquisition impacts, we expect a minimal impact to net revenue growth and approximately 1.5-point contribution to operating expense growth and an approximately 0.5-point headwind to EPS growth in the second quarter. Now, let's cover our full year expectations. We now expect full-year adjusted net revenue growth to be in the low-double digits. There are no material changes to our adjusted operating expense growth and non-operating income expectations for the full year. Based on our lower-than-expected tax rate in Q1 and an updated view for the rest of the year, we're lowering our expected tax rate to be between 17.5% and 18%. Taking all of this together, we now expect adjusted EPS growth to be in the low teens. Featurespace and Pismo are expected to have a minimal impact on full-year net revenue growth and approximately 1 point contribution to operating expense growth and an approximately 0.5-point headwind to EPS growth. In summary, we're off to a strong start to the year. We remain focused on the execution of our growth strategy for the rest of 2025 and look forward to Investor Day in a few weeks. And now, Jennifer, it's time for some Q&A.

Thanks, Chris. And with that, we're ready to take questions.

Thank you. I had a question on the improved outlook. Obviously, the volumes did better, and they accelerated. Does the improved outlook assume the growth rate sort of sustains themselves, or maybe you could just go through sort of what the drivers are? Thanks.

Yeah. Hi, Sanjay. Thanks for the question. Yeah, we feel great about the Q1 results. As I indicated, we’ve seen positive trends, but it is just one quarter, and we'll have more of an update as we move closer to the second half of the fiscal year.

Next question, please?

I appreciate you taking my question. I wanted to follow up on the strong spending results you've reported. Those results have been clear in some of the data so far this quarter. I'm curious if, when you analyze the data, there are specific factors you would attribute to this acceleration over the past couple of months. I understand you've mentioned holiday spending and various factors impacting the days mix, but we've spent quite a bit of time discussing how ticket size has been a challenge. I'm interested in whether this represents a new baseline or if we are simply overcoming tough comparisons from the past couple of years, versus a genuine increase in spending above the trend. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you.

Thank you for the question, Will. Let's break it down a bit. We observed strength in both the US and international markets. In the US, we had a strong holiday season, and I mentioned some of those figures in my prepared comments. This also positively impacted discretionary categories such as retail, travel, and entertainment, alongside the effects of Reg II. This was a significant improvement we noticed in the US, and we are optimistic about it. We have similar positive sentiments across various regions. From a payment volume perspective, we feel confident. Regarding cross-border activity, e-commerce saw a 1 point increase from Q4, benefiting from the stronger retail and holiday season, while travel rose by 4 points from Q4 and has shown improvement over the last two quarters. We're seeing strong travel performance across all regions, and again, we feel optimistic. However, since it's just the beginning of the year, we will wait to see how Q2 unfolds, but our outlook for the second quarter is generally positive.

Next question, please?

Thank you, everyone. I have a couple of questions. First, I’d like to discuss the underlying trends we anticipate for the year, particularly with regard to some of the easier comparisons we have now, considering there were some businesses last year that we are now able to measure against. How will this affect your volume trajectory in the US as the year moves forward? We know that Reg II has already started to make a difference. Additionally, I’d like to ask about the rebates and incentives. You mentioned that we would start the year with a higher quarter. Could you clarify if the results we saw met your expectations, or if there have been any changes in timing? Did it come in as you anticipated? Thanks again.

Yeah. Okay. Let me try to tackle all three of those things, Darrin. In terms of the full year guide, you are recalling correctly, when we started the year, we talked about sort of the dynamics in half-one and half-two and why we anticipated growth to be accelerating throughout the course of the year. Incentives was part of that story. As we said before, as expected, this is going to be a big year for renewals with more than 20% of our payment volume impacted and starting really meaningfully with that renewal cycle in the first half of the year, that has occurred. You saw incentives grow 13% in Q1 versus the 6% we saw in Q4, and that will continue. We anticipate Q2 incentives growth will continue to reflect that renewal cycle. You mentioned Reg II. I think we've covered that. We are lapping what was a modest impact from a year ago. And then, there are some lapping benefits from portfolio as well that are more centered towards the second half of the year as well. That all said, again, I just have said it before to the last question when Will asked, it's a quarter into the year. We've reflected the Q1 upside and adjusted our Q2 outlook to reflect that and we'll certainly talk about half-two as we get closer to it.

Next question?

Hi, thank you. Can you hear me now?

Yes. Now we can.

I apologize for that. I'm sorry. I wanted to ask on value-added services, given the recent closure of Featurespace and I think some emphasis in Pismo. Can you talk, Ryan, has there been a philosophical change or a change in emphasis perhaps in Visa's value-added services initiatives? And going forward, as we think about greater opportunities in that area, should we think about Visa maybe emphasizing some more security offerings versus processing and gateway? Just trying to frame that up.

Yeah. We continue to be very excited about the progress that we're making in value-added services across the board. There's no change in emphasis as it relates to the priority or the prioritization of kind of the areas where we've been building products and serving clients. So, we continue to be very focused on delivering solutions to merchants and acquirers, very focused on delivering solutions to issuers, very focused on delivering fraud and risk solutions broadly across the ecosystem, as well as our advisory business, I talked about some examples in my prepared remarks. We have had some great acquisitions. The way that we think about acquisitions is we're constantly looking for companies around the world that we can bring into our ecosystem, accelerate their growth, and accelerate our kind of products that we're bringing to our clients, and Pismo and Featurespace are two great examples of those. In terms of Pismo, we're having real good success with our sales pipeline all around the world. We're having conversations with clients that I don't think Pismo ever would have had, certainly not this early in their evolution. And the reason we're able to do that is we're bringing, kind of, the amazing capabilities that Pismo offers together with the deep relationships and partnerships that we have, as well as our long track record of delivering resilient solutions to our clients and partners. Featurespace is early, but we're already having a ton of success. I got a ton of great client and partner feedback once we closed that acquisition. We've known Featurespace for many years. We partnered with them. We also competed against them. We know their capabilities really well. One of the things that you're seeing from us is that we're continuing to take the amazing capabilities that we have at Visa, whether that's our fraud capabilities, our network capabilities, our processing capabilities, we're unbundling those from the Visa stack, we're enhancing them, and then we're delivering them to a broader array of clients and partners, many times unrelated to Visa transactions or the VisaNet platform itself. So we continue to focus on all those areas in value-added service. We continue to have good success. And you'll continue to see us kind of move down this kind of program of unbundling our capabilities, enhancing them, and delivering them to a much broader set of clients.

Helpful, thank you.

Next question, please?

Good afternoon. So, Ryan, I want to follow up on your comments on kind of this unbundling of the capabilities and ask about Visa A2A. You talked about 10 new RTP network partnerships. What are you hearing from your issuer and merchant customers? Bill Pay is probably an obvious use case. How should we think about the roadmap of use cases, monetization models, and also the dynamics vis-a-vis debit in terms of cannibalization? Thank you.

Yeah. You're right. And this notion of unbundling our capabilities is very relevant in the value-added services space for some of the reasons that I mentioned. It's also very relevant in the consumer payment space, and Visa Account-to-Account is a great example. A great example where we've unbundled kind of our brand and acceptance, our rules in terms of chargebacks, disputes, and returns, and how things work, as well as kind of our risk management capabilities. We've unbundled that from the Visa stack and now we're delivering that to our partners, initially in the UK with Visa A2A and then more broadly across Europe and other places over time. We still are on track to launch Visa A2A in early 2025. After we announced it, we've done what we always do, which is have a bunch of great conversations with clients and partners and regulators in the UK. As you mentioned, the initial use case is targeted at Bill Pay, and what we found through those conversations is there's a real need. There is a real need to add the types of processes and rules and the trusted brand that we have to account-to-account payments starting in Bill Pay to give consumers more confidence to use it, merchants more reason and confidence to offer it, and we're excited about it. I mean, obviously, Bill Pay in the UK is just the start, but we think that the power of taking some of these Visa capabilities into the account-to-account space is going to be a great benefit for our clients and our partners in the ecosystem. You mentioned Visa Account-to-Account, it's a similar story on what we've been doing in Account-to-Account Protect, where we've taken our decades of risk experience, our data, our scoring algorithms, and unbundled that from the Visa stack, and we're delivering that to, as I said in my prepared remarks, we're targeting up to 10 RTP networks during the course of this year. I mentioned the banks we're now working with in Brazil to reduce fraud on Pix transactions. We've had great success with Pay.UK in the UK, reducing fraud on account-to-account transactions. And you're going to hear a lot more from other partners and other networks around the world. These two examples are both driven by client needs. I mean, that is what drives our innovation agenda, that's what drives our product delivery agenda. We've been hearing from clients all around the world that they're looking for Visa to help them with these types of challenges, both driving safe and secure account-to-account payments around the world. So, very excited about it, and you'll continue to hear more from us on it.

Next question?

Great. Thank you. I want to dig a little bit into the mix components of the cross-border business. So, you've said in the past that roughly about 60% of it is travel and the other roughly 40% is e-commerce. And I know that evolved a little bit throughout COVID and now into the recovery period. But when we think about the e-commerce component, I believe that some of the Visa Direct-related pieces are sitting there. So, whether it be the remittances that are cross-border or the marketplace payouts. I was hoping you could dig into those two or that broader bucket. If there's any rough growth rates or growth contribution or sizing? And if not, just any general comments around that aspect of the cross-border business?

Thanks for the question, Tim. Let's break that down. Regarding e-commerce, the mix you've mentioned is consistent with what we've provided, with e-commerce performing slightly better over the last few quarters. This quarter, both growth rates have come together, which was positive. Visa Direct includes a cross-border element, and we noted that Visa Direct transactions are up 34%. The cross-border part is growing significantly faster, although it remains a small fraction of total transactions. Overall, Visa Direct is showing strong momentum and presents a substantial opportunity. When we consider everything, we're witnessing impressive growth in both e-commerce and cross-border, and the yields are also beneficial.

Yeah. The only thing I'd add is that in the very big scheme of things, with all the success we're having in cross-border Visa Direct, which is great and we are having great success, it's still a very small portion of our cross-border transactions and payment volume around the world in the big scheme of things.

Next question, please?

Hi, thanks. I wanted to follow up on the cross-border question. How much benefit have you experienced from cryptocurrencies in relation to the cross-border e-commerce component? I'm curious about the uplift you saw from that. Also, considering the deceleration in growth rates we’ve observed in January, what is your current outlook on travel and what trends are you noticing in bookings? Any insights you can share on these two topics would be appreciated. Thanks.

Hi, James. Crypto. So, how and where does crypto impact our business? Well, there are a few ways that crypto can show up in our underlying drivers, but typically, when we see an impact, we do see it in our cross-border e-commerce volumes. I talked about some of the drivers of that this quarter relative to Q4. But obviously, given the recent demand and sort of activity around crypto, it is a modest benefit, I would say, to our cross-border e-commerce, but it's one of the smaller benefits. I talked about sort of the other things that impact that. And so that's where we do see it typically.

Next question, please?

Thank you, guys. I wanted to touch on tokenization for a minute. I think you said the number of tokens were up 44% in the quarter. Obviously, a pretty robust number. So, if you can just give us a general update on tokenization strategy and any potential timing or magnitude of actual monetization opportunity from tokenization? Obviously, understanding the benefits of it from a fraud and security perspective, but just wondering if there's any direct monetization we should be thinking about.

I'm glad to discuss tokens. You mentioned the significant increase in the number, and we agree it’s an important milestone. Let me provide some context on our token roadmap. Visa network tokens have been, and will continue to be, a top investment priority for us. We have been at the forefront of token innovation and adoption. It's been nearly a decade since we issued the first Visa token, and in 2020, we reached the milestone of 1 billion tokens. In retrospect, that was just the start of our growth journey. Currently, we have over 12.5 billion tokens in circulation, with 8,400 issuers across more than 200 markets globally. A third of all Visa transactions are now tokenized, with 21 to 22 billion token transactions occurring in the last quarter. Adoption is rapidly increasing due to significant performance improvements. For instance, in e-commerce, tokenized transactions enjoy a 6 percentage point higher approval rate, leading to increased sales for our merchant partners and a 30% reduction in fraud rates, which benefits everyone involved. Tokens are also a vital platform for driving innovation. For example, in Europe, we are using tokens to enhance the e-commerce checkout experience by integrating FIDO pass keys via Visa tokens into Click to Pay, making the checkout process as easy as unlocking a phone with a face or fingerprint. Tokens also support our value-added services, helping us strengthen relationships with partners and increase revenue. Regarding monetization, we have merchants utilizing our token credential enrichment service, which keeps Visa credentials updated for them, ensuring they don’t miss subscriptions or sales when cards expire. On the issuer side, we have a service that allows issuers to create a heat map of their consumers' tokens across the ecosystem, for which they pay us to help their customers manage their Visa cards with various merchants. We are developing and planning a wide range of token-based services, and the revenue from these services is significant and will continue to grow.

Next question, please?

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Ryan, I just want to ask about X Money. How long does a project like that take for you guys to implement with X? Any kind of idea on how fast and how much volume that might ramp? And any thoughts on economics? I assume it's just kind of Visa Direct type transactions. Thanks.

I believe the partnership with X is a strong illustration of what has been a significant trend among fintech companies, large tech firms, cryptocurrencies, digital wallets, social messaging applications, and others. They have evaluated their options and determined that the Visa platform and its extensive network represent the most reliable and comprehensive solution for money movement. This platform is designed to allow developers to swiftly implement the solutions they need. This partnership is another important milestone in our ongoing journey. As mentioned, it is based on the Visa Direct platform, which will enable approximately 600 million active monthly users of X to fund their X Money accounts. They will have the ability to instantly transfer funds back to their bank accounts from their X Money accounts. Additionally, creators on the X platform will now benefit from faster payments when they use Visa Direct to transfer funds back to their bank accounts. This truly reflects the strong collaboration between our team and the X Money team in developing these use cases, and we are excited to further expand the range of applications on our platform.

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Hey, thanks so much for taking my question. I was actually just curious if you heard through your partners on either the consumer or commercial side, if the threat of tariffs pushed up any commercial spending or consumer spending and if you've tracked that in the past? Thanks so much.

Yeah. We haven't seen anything directly related to that. And I think just like, I guess, broadening the question a bit. I think on tariffs broadly, we're going to have to wait and see what happens. I think it's going to be very difficult to predict what's going to get implemented, where it's going to get implemented. And as we see these things potentially get implemented, we'll have a better sense on what impact it has for our business and we can let you know then.

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Hi, good afternoon. Thank you. I wanted to ask on commercial. I think I got 6% growth, so 1 point improvement there quarter-on-quarter. Can you talk more about the trends in commercial spend in Q1 and further improvement expected or I guess, sustainable here in the '25 outlook relative to what you saw in '24?

Thank you for your question. You are correct about the numbers. Commercial volumes increased from Q4 by just over 1 point. The growth in Q1 was supported by a few factors: favorable days mix both in the US and internationally, which was the opposite of what I mentioned in Q4 when the days mix acted as a headwind. I also noted stronger commercial cross-border volumes. Additionally, although small, there was less drag from ATS as it continues to develop. I mentioned strong results from client portfolios that aided cross-border volumes in Europe and Asia-Pacific, which also positively impacted commercial volumes. All of this contributed to our robust new flows revenue performance. This trend in commercial volumes is reflected in our Q2 guidance, and we expect them to remain steady, stable, and strong for the rest of the year.

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Thank you. I was curious if you could elaborate on the impact of the dollar's strength and its relationship with purchasing power parity. This seems relevant for cross-border activities, particularly for outbound from the U.S., which may be a challenge for incoming travelers. Additionally, I'm interested in how this affects spending patterns overall. It appears we might be in a strong period for a while, and I would like to know the extent to which this might provide a proportional benefit to your business. Thank you.

The dollar has significantly and rapidly strengthened. This means that Americans have greater purchasing power when traveling abroad. Historically, stronger dollar periods have led to changes in travel patterns, with more outbound travel from the US. Conversely, it becomes more expensive for international travelers to visit the US. In past instances of a stronger dollar, we've observed shifts in travel behavior, with fewer travelers choosing the US in favor of other destinations worldwide. However, it's still early in this current situation, and we will need to keep an eye on it. Despite changes in travel routes typically associated with a strengthening dollar, overall travel spending has generally remained stable. People just adjust their holiday plans to different locations, but this transition takes time. Currently, we are still in the early stages of this stronger dollar period, so if this trend continues, we will provide more insights in the upcoming quarters.

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Hey, Ryan. Hey, Chris. Thanks for taking my questions. I just wanted to ask on the regulatory environment in the US. Obviously, a new regulatory regime here. Wondering just your view on that and just conversations maybe you've had with issuers or other parties, just trying to get a better sense. I know there's a few things going on in the US obviously. I'm curious how you're feeling. Thanks so much.

Yeah. We're optimistic. Our clients are optimistic. And I think what we've heard so far is that the administration wants to move quickly to reduce and simplify regulations, and they're doing it kind of with a goal of spurring economic growth, efficiency, innovation, all very good things. So, we're optimistic that these changes are going to reduce the regulatory burden for businesses in general in America, which is good for America and ultimately should be good for Visa. We're optimistic as our clients are that they're going to reduce the regulatory burden specifically in the financial sector, which will in turn help our FI clients accelerate digital payments and, in general, run their businesses more efficiently and more effectively, which is very good for them and which is in turn good for us. So, we're optimistic, but again, it's early, and we just have to see what gets implemented, where it gets implemented, and how quickly it does.

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Thank you for the question. I wanted to revisit the significant deal renewals you mentioned earlier and inquire about how the various revenue streams interact in these renewals. Specifically, I'm trying to understand the extent to which you are making pricing concessions during these large renewals or deal expansions. To what degree can you compensate for that with additional revenue or value-added services sold to these issuers? I realize this is a complex issue, but how much of this contributes to the growth we're observing in other revenue streams? Thank you.

First, reflecting on this quarter and the previous one, we have experienced tremendous success with clients globally. They continue to choose Visa because of our brand, products, innovation, people, and increasingly, our value-added services and new flows capabilities. To answer your question, when our teams engage with partners on renewal extensions and new business deals, it is significantly different from three or four years ago. The conversations with clients are now multifaceted and comprehensive, covering a wide range of services we can provide, including network services for debit and credit cards. More importantly, we are discussing processing, services, fraud and risk management, and expanding our historical relationships in consumer payments to include small-business cards, commercial cards, and fleet-specific priorities, as well as agricultural and various B2B verticals. This represents a different sales approach and negotiation style, and, as you noted, it involves multiple revenue levers that we didn't traditionally utilize. It varies by client and market depending on their priorities, but our teams are increasingly successful in building on deep historical relationships in consumer payments and using these renewal opportunities to expand our partnerships, particularly in new flows and VAS opportunities, thereby creating new revenue growth opportunities.

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Great. Thank you. Does the news this week on DeepSeek influence how you're thinking about your business strategy, possibly in terms of whether you're thinking about stepping up the usage of AI to help with managing internal costs or maybe in terms of whether you're thinking about using AI as a tool to support your growth and unlock new revenue opportunities? Because it does appear from an outsider's perspective, AI potentially could help improve operating efficiency and might even perhaps support some of your revenue areas like authorization or fraud prevention. So, wanted to ask you for your view on what DeepSeek and the rise of AI generally means for Visa as far as strategy and where do you see opportunity going forward? Thanks.

Yeah, we agree with you. Everything that's happening in the world, whether it's DeepSeek or the many, many things that have happened before or will happen after it, all are examples of opportunities for us broadly across Visa. We were very early adopters of artificial intelligence and we continue to drive hard at the adoption of generative AI as we have for the last couple of years. So, we've been working to embed AI and AI tooling into our company's operations. I guess, broadly we've seen material gains in productivity, particularly in our engineering teams. We've deployed AI tooling in client services, sales, finance, marketing, really everywhere across the company. And we were a very early adopter of applied AI in the analytics and modeling space. Very early by like decades, we've been using AI in that space. So, our data science and risk management teams have, at this point, decades of applied experience with AI and they're aggressively adopting the current generations of AI technology to enhance both our internal and our market-facing predictive and detective modeling capabilities. Our product teams are also aggressively adopting GAI to build and ship new products. I think I talked last quarter about data tokens, that's a great example. And just as the Internet itself fundamentally changed the way that we all shop and buy and the way commerce works itself, we deeply believe that AI is going to be a driving force that is going to change the way digital commerce works. And we have an amazing team of people that are working really hard to ensure that Visa plays a central and sustainable role in the next version of digital commerce, and I think we'll have more to say about that in future quarters.

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Thank you. I have a question and a clarification. Regarding Asia-Pac, it seems to be the only underperforming region, while growth elsewhere was strong. Is there an updated outlook for Asia-Pac? Additionally, can you share any shifts in perspective regarding the macro versus structural factors in that region? For my clarification, was the restructuring included in your previous guidance, and will the savings from that be reinvested quickly? I apologize if I missed that. Thank you.

Great, Tien. Okay, let me quickly address this. First, regarding the restructuring, we recorded a charge this quarter, which is included in our full-year guidance. We are primarily focusing on managing our expenses and do not anticipate another charge this year. Could you please remind me of your first question?

Asia-Pac.

Yeah, sorry. So, AP growth, I think you characterized it right. It is moderately up from Q4, about 1 point, a little bit more than 1 point, but it still reflects a somewhat muted environment. So, it's growing at 1% in total, moving in the right direction, but still quite muted.

And with that, we'd like to thank you for joining us today. If you have additional questions, please feel free to call or email our Investor Relations team. Thanks again, and have a great day.