“Visa partners with Musk’s X for direct payment solutions”
“Visa stock hits all-time high of $335.53 amid robust growth”
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Visa is an interesting company to follow. Especially now that digital currencies are emerging and the industry may experience changes in the future. I believe Visa will make acquisitions in the blockchain sector in the future.
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Visa grew its profit in the first quarter, reportedly because consumers spent money especially on travel and restaurants during the holiday season, additionally “merchants” attracted customers with discounts, and travel remained strong due to favorable prices and a lack of disruptions. The total number of card payments also grew significantly. 
https://x.com/CmgVenture/status/1885076682593190212
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Digital currencies have been around for 10 years and haven’t affected Visa or Mastercard much. I believe they won’t affect them in the future either.
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Visa is actually already heavily involved in crypto. Payments are also evolving, and the European Central Bank will issue a digital euro at some point in the future. I personally believe it will be harder to get a 1-3% cut from purchases in the future.
Here is a small update from Investing visuals regarding Visa.
https://x.com/ZeevyInvesting/status/1885659042225250384
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Visa’s competitor, Mastercard’s CEO, as a guest of Norway’s oil fund’s Nicolai Tangen on a podcast (In good company): Spotify – Web Player
In the first half, good discussion about industry development: fintech partnerships, security/fraud prevention, cryptocurrencies, the focus on African development also mentioned here, the potential threat posed by Big Tech.
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Here’s a “comparison” of how Visa and Mastercard make their money.
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Here are a couple of tweets that might interest Visa owners.
Visa benefits from competitors’ reliance on its Direct service, which increases at least transactions and revenue.
https://x.com/jevgenijs/status/1896165968805863789
This was again spotted in a thread that examined companies with a strong competitive advantage that return over 100% of their cash flow to shareholders. 
https://x.com/finchat_io/status/1899197364503798216
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Credit Suisse published a long presentation on the payment services industry in 2020. I’m attaching it here; it was publicly available, although it doesn’t appear as the first search result anymore, being an older document. It’s interesting that it was actually published in 1/20 (before COVID). Some of the information is, of course, already outdated. However, this chart, for example, is quite insightful:
For me, a big realization regarding Visa has been that the company only takes 0.15 - 0.20% of the transaction value. Of the total ~2.5% fee, the majority goes to the card issuer (the bank), which, of course, uses that fee for benefits offered to customers. So, Visa takes a small slice of a very large pie. Naturally, the bank’s share is an important incentive for them to issue cards.
Additionally, I like Visa’s inflation hedge (the slice grows as the total value of payments grows at the rate of inflation) and its growth drivers. Growth is thus driven by the global increase in payment value, let’s say a few percent per year, plus a shift away from cash, another few percent. As has been written in this thread, there is still a significant shift away from cash, for example, remaining in the world, which we here in the Nordics might forget. Finally, as a sweet treat, Visa’s competitive advantage, the mother of all network effects: a challenger would need to gather a sufficient mass of both payment system users and merchants belonging to the system. I used the word ‘payment system’ instead of ‘card’ because Visa is essentially just a network through which payments travel.
Payments_primer_credit_suisse_0120.pdf (6.4 Mt)
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Here’s a tweet about Visa’s dividends and “share buybacks”.
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The tweet below highlights that Visa is a stable stock with consistent revenue and net income growth, as well as a high return on invested capital (ROIC 22.5%) and a strong cash position with over $14 billion.
The tweet also points out that the company operates in a practical duopoly with Mastercard, pays dividends, and buys back its shares.
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The company is attractive but seems chronically expensive. As I see it, at these valuation levels, hardly any possible negative development has been baked into the price.
In China, payments, as I understand it, occur within Chinese apps and payment networks. Presumably something similar is happening in Russia due to the war. If the trade war worsens and the position of the US/dollar suffers, would that also pose a threat to Visa/Mastercard?
China is probably trying to offer its systems to developing countries in Africa and perhaps to the Middle East / Asia. EU countries have discussed a digital wallet.
I don’t know if these are relevant threats to curb Visa’s growth, but I personally see the threat from these currently as greater than, for example, 5 years ago.
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So, don’t they have credit cards, e.g., for travel?
If you meant China, then there, the most popular Unionpay works more widely in many Asian countries and in Western countries in a similarly more restricted way as Western cards in China. In Finland, you can withdraw money from ATMs with a Unionpay card, which Russians utilized when Russian banks were placed on the sanctions list; now, Unionpay cards issued to Russians should no longer work in Finnish ATMs.
In China, the use of various mobile apps is popular (which facilitates the stalking of citizens), and they are also widely used for payments.
In Western countries, Westerners are unlikely to largely start switching Visas/Mastercards to Chinese cards, but they can indeed globally slow down the world domination of Western cards.
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It seems that 99% of payments are made domestically through Chinese Alipay or WeChat apps, and few people even carry cash.
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Visa reported strong growth in the second quarter of the fiscal year.
Payment activity, so to speak, accelerated, cross-border payments increased, and transactions were generally processed very briskly. Consumers continued to shop, despite economic uncertainty. The company spent a large sum on share buybacks and dividends, and a new large buyback program is starting.
According to the CEO, a diversified business and investment in innovation create a good foundation for the rest of the year.
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Here’s even more about Visa’s numbers, nicely visualized.
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Over the years, these have probably faced various “threats” and “challengers,” at which point people like me have thought that their momentum would now slow down.
https://x.com/finchat_io/status/1934713868615602442
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I personally believe it will be harder in the future to get that 1-3% slice from card purchases. I predict that acquisitions are coming, and seeking growth from other sources.
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