With a generally stable economy in most corners of the world, Visa Inc. managed to gather $2.1 trillion in their gross credit and debit payment transactions in Q1 which ended on June 30. This figure was an 11.1 percent rise from 2017’s $1.87 trillion on a constant-currency basis.
The U.S., so far Visa’s largest of all six regions recorded a decent 10.5 percent rise in payment volume (from $840 billion to $928 billion). Credit card sales jumped 10.5 percent to make up $493 billion of the total revenue, while debit cards made the remaining $435 billion increasing 10.6 percent.
Plans to table discussions with merchants
The growth in the U.S was partly inspired by the increasing acceptance of Visa Direct, the firm’s payment service for debit card according to CEO Alfred F. Kelly Jr.
The chief executive spoke on a Wednesday noon forum with analysts to discuss Visa’s prospect for 2018’s Q3.
Visa Direct is also spreading its wings to other nations. “Volume has doubled from 2017,” Kelly said.
In the meantime, the CEO confirmed that resolution talks are underway with their pending big credit card interchange lawsuit (the MDL 1720) filed at the District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y. The firm recently dedicated an extra $600 million to its litigation account to finance its share of the reached settlement.
According to media reports, the defendants—MasterCard Inc., Visa Inc., and some big banks— may solve their 13-year-old case filed by card-taking retailers for $6.5 billion.
The merchants are looking for financial damages, plus the alleged injunctive relief concerning card-acceptance regulations. Kelly said Visa had settled in response to the class seeking compensation for monetary damages. He also mentioned that talks with the high volume merchant account holders pursuing injunctive relief are “in progress,” but gave no exact estimate on when we should expect a formal agreement.
Away from the United States, Europe received much attention during the meeting. Part of what Kelly focused on was the June 1 event which he called the “partial disruption” in Visa’s network in some European nations.
The disruption raised concerns of the media and a group of legislators in the U.K. The disrupted hitched Visa Europe, a processing platform and bank-owned organization that Visa Inc. bought in 2016, Kelly said.
“It wasn’t an outage, and if truth be told, nearly 95 percent of single transactions attempts over the 10-hour span went through successfully,” Kelly said.
He also added that the disruption “was not in any way related” to the current migration of European transactions to Visa Inc.’s processing stage. “We stay on track to see through the migration and finish by the end of 2018,” The CEO said.