Visa Q3 2026 Earnings: Profit Tops Forecasts as Spending Volume Passes $4 Trillion
Visa beat Wall Street estimates on profit and revenue this quarter, even as it announced major job cuts the same day.
| Q3 2026 | Reported | Expected | Surprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| EPS | $3.32 | $3.29 | +0.8% |
| Revenue | $11.63B | $11.62B | +0.1% |
Key takeaways
- Visa’s earnings and revenue both came in slightly above what analysts had expected, continuing the payments giant’s pattern of clearing its own bar most quarters.
- Growth was driven by people and businesses simply spending and paying more: total payments volume topped $4 trillion in a single quarter for the first time, and cross-border spending (money moved between countries, typically a higher-margin business for Visa) grew even faster than domestic activity, up 13%.
- Visa processed 71.7 billion transactions in the quarter, up 10% from a year earlier, reflecting the continued shift away from cash that feeds the company’s core network-fee business.
- The company’s very high margins and returns – most of every revenue dollar converts to profit, and it earns well over half its shareholder equity back each year – reflect that Visa mainly licenses its payment network rather than carrying the lending risk or deposit costs that banks do.
- Visa returned a large amount of cash to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends during the quarter, and the board approved another quarterly dividend, signaling confidence in the business’s ongoing cash generation.
- For the rest of its fiscal year, management guided to revenue growth in the low end of the ‘low teens’ percentage range and profit growth in the low end of the ‘mid-teens’ range – a slight moderation from prior expectations that some investors had hoped for, even though results this quarter beat estimates.
- On the same day as earnings, Visa said it would cut about 2,600 jobs – roughly 7% of its workforce, concentrated in technology and product teams – with CEO Ryan McInerney citing a push for efficiency and reinvestment in areas like stablecoins, cross-border payments and business-to-business products; the company said AI-driven productivity gains played a role but were not the sole reason.
- Visa’s stock dipped modestly in after-hours trading following the results, which analysts attributed to the guidance moderation overshadowing the quarter’s beat.
How the stock took it
Visa Inc. closed at $362.53 on Jul 27, 2026, the last session before the report, and at $368.73 on Jul 29, 2026, the first session after it — +1.7% across the report.
| Earlier report | Close before | Close after | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 29, 2026 | $309.30 | $329.84 | +6.6% |
| Jan 30, 2026 | $331.80 | $333.84 | +0.6% |
| Jul 30, 2025 | $351.29 | $345.47 | -1.7% |
Closes from the market's daily record. Each figure spans the report date — from the last session that closed before it to the first that closed after — because a company may report before the open or after the close.
Fundamentals
| Metric | Value | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Gross margin | 81.3% | Trailing 12 months |
| Operating margin | 61.1% | Trailing 12 months |
| Net profit margin | 51.7% | Trailing 12 months |
| Pretax margin | 61.5% | Trailing 12 months |
| EPS | $11.48 | Trailing 12 months |
| Revenue growth (YoY) | 14.4% | Trailing 12 months |
| EPS growth (YoY) | 15.3% | Trailing 12 months |
| Return on equity | 58.9% | Trailing 12 months |
Sources: company report · earnings call · CNBC · Reuters/market coverage