VISA INC

Visa Inc. is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Foster City, California, United States.

The company oversees a financial services portfolio which facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly through Visa-branded credit cards, debit cards and prepaid cards.

Visa does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers; rather, the company provides financial institutions with Visa-branded payment products that they then use to offer credit, debit, prepaid and cash-access programs to their customers.

The company has a history dating back to 1958 when it was established by Bank of America (BofA) as the BankAmericard credit card program.

In response to competitor Master Charge (now MasterCard), BofA began to license the BankAmericard program to other financial institutions in 1966.

By 1970, BofA gave up direct control of the BankAmericard program, forming a consortium with the other various BankAmericard issuer banks to take over its management. It was then renamed Visa in 1976.

At the time, the directors of IBANCO determined that bringing the various international networks together into a single network with a single name internationally would be in the best interests of the corporation; however, in many countries, there was still great reluctance to issue a card associated with Bank of America, even though the association was entirely nominal in nature.

For this reason, in 1976, BankAmericard, Barclaycard, Carte Bleue, Chargex, Sumitomo Card, and all other licensees united under the new name, “Visa”, which retained the distinctive blue, white and gold flag. NBI became Visa USA and IBANCO became Visa International.

The term Visa was conceived by the company’s founder, Dee Hock. He believed that the word was instantly recognizable in many languages in many countries, and that it also denoted universal acceptance.

Today, Visa has operations across all six continents. Nearly all Visa transactions worldwide are processed through the company’s directly operated VisaNet at one of four secure data centers, located in Ashburn, Virginia; Highlands Ranch, Colorado; London, England; and Singapore. These facilities are heavily secured against natural disasters, crime, and terrorism; can operate independently of each other and from external utilities if necessary; and can handle up to 30 000 simultaneous transactions and up to 100 billion computations every second.

As such, Visa is the world’s second-largest card payment organization (debit and credit cards combined), after being surpassed by China UnionPay in 2015, based on annual value of card payments transacted and number of issued card

On October 11, 2006, Visa announced that some of its businesses would be merged and become a publicly traded company, Visa Inc.

Under the IPO restructuring, Visa Canada, Visa International, and Visa USA were merged into the new public company.

Visa’s Western Europe operation became a separate company, owned by its member banks who will also have a minority stake in Visa Inc.

In total, more than 35 investment banks participated in the deal in several capacities, most notably as underwriters.

Visa Inc. is a global payments technology company connecting consumers, businesses, banks and governments in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide.

Visa Inc. continues to advance commerce globally, with 188.1 billion total transactions processed a year through VisaNet.

This includes payments and cash transactions processed by the company’s network in the four quarters ended December 31, 2018.

However, the company sustained losses in the month of March 2025 due to the significant economic contraction as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

This was primarily due to the fact that the epidemic has impacted travel to and from Asia, and has driven a sharp slowdown at its cross-border business, a key source of revenue for the world’s largest payments network.

The company was also adversely affected by the limitations placed on people to avoid spreading the coronavirus, so that its transaction volumes severely decreased.

In response to this, the company has renewed several key relationships and formed new partnerships, all in support of the opportunities that its management has identified in consumer payments, new flows and value added services.

On January 13, 2025, Visa Inc. announced it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Plaid, a network that makes it easy for people to securely connect their financial accounts to the apps they use to manage their financial lives.

Visa will pay $ 4.9 billion cash consideration and $ 0.4 billion of retention equity and deferred equity consideration. This acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including ongoing regulatory reviews and approvals, which are expected to be completed by the end of 2025.

This strategic acquisition brought about before the worst financial contraction of the pandemic to date, will likely significantly enhance the company’s services portfolio and allow for an even broader service network once markets reopen.

As such, the consumer need for Visa cards has not declined, but only their ability to physically spend, at typical points such as restaurants, stores etc. It is likely therefore that once markets reopen and usual consumer behaviour resumes (albeit incrementally), the company’s share value will also improve.

Visa Inc. trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) where investors can buy shares under the stock symbol –V

Data from the company’s 2025 financial analysis of its fiscal second quarter results shows net revenues were $5.9 billion, an increase of 7%, driven by the year-over-year changes in payments volume, cross-border volume and processed transactions, which were not significantly impacted by COVID-19 until the latter part of March. Net revenues growth was approximately 8% on a constant-dollar basis.

Payments volume for the three months ended March 31, 2025, grew 5% over the prior year on a constant-dollar basis.

Cross-border volume, on a constant-dollar basis, declined by 2% for the three months ended March 31, 2025.

Excluding cross-border transactions within Europe, which have revenue yields similar to Europe’s domestic volume, the decline on a constant-dollar basis was 5% in the quarter. Total processed transactions, which represent transactions processed by Visa, for the three months ended March 31, 2025, were 34.9 billion, a 7% increase over the prior year.

As such, Visa Inc.’s overall performance was generally better than expected despite losses sustained towards the end of March. Again, this is a strong indication that consumer spending trends will resume after the global lockdowns begin to ease, and are ultimately lifted indefinitely.

All in all, the company relatively a resilient performance should provide good dividends and a rising share price for investors who choose to purchase shares today, securing a good long-term buy-in in 2025 and in the future.

Financials

Specialty Finance

Consumer Finance

1. Navigate to the AvaTrade website and select ‘Register’
2. Complete the registration form with the required information and submit documentation to verify your proof of Identity along with your proof of address.
3. As soon as your account application has been reviewed and approved, you can select your trading platform from AvaTrade’s website, or by visiting the MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5 websites respectively to start download.
4. Once you have downloaded the trading platform of your choice, you can use your AvaTrade live account details to log into your AvaTrade account on the trading platform.
5. From the Market Watch screen on both MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, you can select AvaTrade to buy/purchase shares.
6. Alternatively, you can make use of AvaTrade’s online Web Trader or the AvaTradeGo mobile application.

Buying shares has never been this convenient and easy. #myfirstshare

View more global shares for sale – here.

• Leverage of up to 1:20
• Being able to trade stocks on the NYSE, NASDAQ, FTSE, and various others.
• Indices, stocks, and commodities can all be traded form a single screen.
• Client support is presented live in a multitude of languages.
• Traders have exclusive access to a variety of educational tools
• Trades can be executed across multiple platforms

More shares that can be purchased / traded through AvaTrade, can be viewed here.

• Can I buy Visa shares in South Africa?
  Yes, you can.

• How to buy Visa shares
  By simply opening a free account on SA Shares, or by clicking the “Buy this Share” button to get started.

• What is the current share price?
  By clicking on the link provided above, you can view the real-time Visa share price on the platform.

• Is Visa a good share to buy?
  Yes, Visa Inc. has shown a resilient performance despite losses sustained in may due to a drop in cross-border spending as a result of global restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
  However, latent consumer spending trends are likely to resume post-Covid restrictions, resulting in a sharp spike in the company’s shares, making this a good buy-in for investors seeking returns in the long-term.

• Can I buy Visa CFD through SA Shares?
  Yes, you can.