Visa Q4 FY2026 Earnings Call: 13% Revenue Growth and FY2027 Outlook

Key Takeaways

• Visa reported fiscal Q4 2026 net revenue of $12.1 billion, up 13% year over year, while EPS increased 17% to $3.48.
• Full-year net revenue reached a record $46 billion, up 15%, and full-year EPS rose 16% to $13.27.
• Q4 global payments volume grew 9% in constant dollars. Cross-border volume excluding intra-Europe increased 14%, while processed transactions rose 10%.
• Value-added services revenue increased 31% in constant dollars to $4 billion in Q4. Full-year VAS revenue grew 30% to $14 billion.
• Management expects adjusted FY2027 net revenue to grow in the low double digits and adjusted EPS to increase from the low double digits to low teens.
• Agentic Commerce and stablecoins remain strategic priorities, but management said their financial contribution should remain small relative to Visa’s overall business during FY2027.

Core Financial Data

Business and Operating Performance

U.S. payments volume grew 10% in Q4, with credit volume up 11% and debit up 9%. Management said discretionary and nondiscretionary spending remained strong, with no signs of weakening among lower-spending consumers.

Cross-border trends accelerated. Travel-related cross-border volume increased 13%, three percentage points faster than in Q3, primarily due to improved inbound and outbound activity in CEMEA. Cross-border e-commerce volume rose 17%, supported by retail spending, including spending on AI platforms.

Commercial payments volume increased 13% in Q4 and 12% for FY2026, both in constant dollars. Visa Direct transactions grew 23% in the quarter. For the full year, Visa Direct handled more than 15 billion transactions, representing approximately $1.5 trillion in payments volume.

Visa ended FY2026 with 5.2 billion credentials, up 6%, and more than 200 million seller locations. Including digital wallets, Visa credentials could be used at more than 400 million seller locations. More than 50% of available credentials were tokenized, and tokenization covered more than 60% of e-commerce transactions.

Stablecoin settlement exceeded a $25 billion annualized run rate, up tenfold year over year. Visa supported 10 blockchains and had more than 225 stablecoin-linked card programs, with volume rising more than 150% across 5 million cards in over 50 countries.

Value-added services remained a major growth engine. Management attributed the business’s performance to transaction, card and account growth, pricing, client expansion and demand for cybersecurity, fraud prevention, processing and advisory services. The company expects its issuing, acceptance, and risk and security portfolios to sustain growth above 20% in FY2027.

Management Guidance

Management’s guidance is presented on an adjusted, constant-dollar basis and excludes acquisition effects.

For fiscal Q1 2027, management expects net revenue growth in the low double digits, just under one percentage point below Q4 adjusted growth. Operating expenses are also expected to grow in the low double digits, modestly below revenue growth. Management projects nonoperating expense of approximately $60 million, a tax rate of 18.5% to 19%, and EPS growth at the low end of the mid-teens.

The outlook assumes that the macroeconomic environment remains broadly stable and consumer spending stays resilient. Pricing benefits are expected to be similar to FY2026 but more concentrated in the second half. Management also expects to renew relationships representing approximately 25% of payments volume, which should increase client incentive growth.

Risks and Areas to Watch

• The Middle East conflict creates near-term uncertainty for cross-border travel spending in SEMEA. Management assumes those volumes remain broadly indexed to Q4 levels.
• Lower volatility is expected to be a full-year revenue headwind, with the largest drag anticipated in fiscal Q2.
• FY2027 includes a larger renewal cycle, covering about 25% of payments volume versus approximately 20% in FY2026, which is expected to increase client incentives.
• Agentic Commerce adoption remains early. Management expects its impact on FY2027 results to remain small relative to Visa’s overall business.
• Management said it is difficult to determine how long the recent acceleration in U.S. payments volume can persist.
• The pending BioCatch acquisition remains subject to regulatory approval. Visa expects closing no later than the end of fiscal Q2.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

Agentic Commerce: Management described adoption as being at an early stage despite increasing consumer visibility. Visa is working with issuers, acquirers and technology partners to support identity verification, agent registration, transaction intent and dispute resolution at scale. Nearly 50 AI partners were live and in production, with that number expected to double in the coming months.

Client renewals and incentives: Management emphasized that FY2027 revenue guidance already incorporates the larger renewal cycle. Visa views incentives as a tool for securing broader and longer-term relationships across consumer payments, CMS and value-added services.

Stablecoin strategy: Visa said it is both stablecoin-agnostic and blockchain-agnostic. The company currently supports five stablecoins for settlement and plans to integrate additional stablecoins across Visa Direct and other products.

Pismo expansion: Management said Pismo’s international expansion has exceeded its expectations. Demand covers both core banking and issuer-processing capabilities, with opportunities in the U.S. concentrated in medium-sized and smaller clients, alongside selective core banking opportunities among large banks.

Cybersecurity services: Visa sees strong demand for threat intelligence, identity and behavioral fraud prevention, transaction intelligence, resilience and advisory services. Management cited existing client relationships, network data and its broad product portfolio as competitive strengths.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Welcome to Visa's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Ms. Jennifer Como, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Investor Relations. Ms. Como, you may begin.

Jennifer Como

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Visa's fiscal fourth quarter and full Year 2026 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, outcomes or timing 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. Except as required by law, we do not undertake any responsibility to update these forward-looking statements. Our comments today regarding our financial results will reflect revenue on a GAAP basis and all of the 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.

Ryan McInerney

Thanks, Jennifer. 2026 was a milestone year for Visa. We finished the year with fourth quarter net revenue of $12.1 billion, up 13% year-over-year. This resulted in full year record net revenue of $46 billion, up 15%, the strongest net revenue growth in over 15 years, excluding the post-pandemic recovery and acquisitions. CMS revenue grew 19% and VAS revenue grew 30%, both in constant dollars and their revenue collectively represents more than 40% of our total net revenue. Our drivers for the year were strong. Payments volume was up 9% year-over-year in constant dollars. Commercial Payments volume grew 12% for the year in constant dollars faster than consumer and the fastest annual growth rate in 8 years, excluding the post-pandemic recovery. Total cross-border volumes, excluding intra-Europe, rose 12% year-over-year with travel up 11% and e-commerce up 15%, all in constant dollars. We processed 281 billion transactions, up 9% year-over-year and with approximately 80% processing penetration globally. And Visa Direct topped 15 billion transactions representing about $1.5 trillion in payments volume. While these numbers speak to our strength, in 2026, we also demonstrated that whenever technology changes commerce, we move with it. We anticipate what's next, and we enable its growth as the leading hyperscaler of payments globally. The foundation of all of this is trust. Visa brings trust with our scale, our network and infrastructure and our products, all delivered through our Visa as-a-service stack.

Starting with scale. We have scale in issuance and acceptance. In 2026, we had $5.2 billion credentials, up 6% year-over-year with Latin America crossing the billionth credential milestone and we continued to grow our credentials globally in a number of ways. We signed new co-brand agreements and expanded existing relationships with marquee brands around the world. In the hotel industry, this included Marriott in SEMEA, Asia Pacific, Latin America and North America. And in the airline industry, this included Air India and Asia Pacific, Copa Airlines in Latin America, Qatar Airways and Ethiopian Airlines in CEMEA. We also had the launch of debit portfolios for Alaska Airlines and Southwest Airlines in the U.S. in addition to our existing credit portfolios with these brands.

In the U.S., we added the new Samsung Galaxy card and maintained our leadership position with 7 of the top 10 U.S. co-brands. In the affluent space, we recently launched our new Visa Infinite Card series, signing with more than 70 issuers in over 40 countries in Q4 alone with more than 15 issuers in Latin America, including Santander in Mexico as part of an expanded relationship with Visa. Our Flex credentials have tripled since last year with continued strength from existing players as well as growth from new partners such as Cash App and Shine. We will also soon be launching the world's first stablecoin linked Visa Flex credential with Norwegian Block Exchange or NBX in Europe. Visa Pay, which connects wallets to any Visa-accepting seller worldwide has nearly tripled its presence since last year to 11 countries.

In commercial, we have over 15 new fleet clients this year across our 5 regions. We recently renewed our global agreement with WEX to enable B2B travel and solutions for their corporate clients. We also expanded our relationship from Europe to the U.S. with Audience for their travel clients and through Visa's multinational program, Newline by Fifth Third will be enabling U.S.-based fintechs to offer Visa corporate cards in 46 countries. Across all of this credential growth, we continue to drive adoption of tokens. Today, over 50% of all available credentials are tokenized, more than doubling from 5 years ago. In 2026, we processed a tokenized transaction in 200 countries and territories for the first time and now more than 60% of all e-commerce transactions are tokenized.

On acceptance, we have well over 200 million seller locations driven by a more than 40% increase in Brazil, a more than 60% increase in Mexico and a more than 15% increase in India seller locations year-over-year. When we incorporate digital wallets, Visa credentials can be used at more than 200 million additional seller locations. So in total, Visa credentials can be used at more than 400 million seller locations. With this increased acceptance, Visa empowers buyers and sellers with secure ways to pay, such as with tap to pay, reaching nearly 85% penetration of face-to-face transactions globally.

And with the final top 100 seller enabling tap to pay in 2026 we reached 75% penetration in the U.S. well on our way to the global total. Tap to Phone has driven new small business acceptance with more than 25 million active Visa-accepting mobile devices across more than 100 markets, surpassing more than 1 billion transactions in 2026, with 30% of Tap to Phone sellers new to our ecosystem this year. And for micro sellers in more emerging markets, we have Visa accept, which has grown to 15 markets in just one year. Throughout all of these efforts, we are expanding our reach to power all types of payments, C2B, B2B, P2P, B2C, G2C and more. In fact, we have the largest money movement platform on the planet with Visa Direct as measured by transactions, volumes and accounts with more than 18 billion endpoints across cards, accounts and wallets, up from 12 billion in 2025. Clients value the trust that this brings, and we have over 40 clients who each used more than 5 different Visa Direct use cases this year.

A recent example of a client adding new use cases is Navy Federal, who we have already partnered with on cross-border remittances and is part of a broader renewal across consumer and commercial portfolios and VAS, including DPS, they are positioning Visa Direct to support a number of new domestic money movement use cases over time. In addition, Wells Fargo has enabled Visa Direct for cross-border payroll, accounts payable and disbursement payments. With our credentials, acceptance and our reach, Visa has and will continue to bring scale to the ecosystem. You see this play out across our more than 200 countries and territories. For example, in Asia Pacific in 2026, we renewed and expanded with 3 of the top 4 Australian banks, 3 of the top 4 Indian banks, 2 of the top 4 Chinese banks, initiated new relationships with Japanese clients such as PayPay and Travel Wallet Japan.

Visa also delivers trust through our network and infrastructure. Over the last 5 years, we have invested $15 billion in our network security and resilience, all to provide that [ 69 ] of reliability always-on capability that you expect from Visa. And this year, we tested and strengthened our defenses through our Visa vulnerability agent harness, which we then open source to the world. We also made progress this year building the next generation of VisaNet to enable the future of commerce through a cloud-native micro services distributed, modular architecture that uses open languages and technologies enabling easier scaling and configuration and faster feature deployment.

Today, this supports live authorization traffic in production across markets in Latin America and CEMEA and powers additional payment processing workloads at a global scale. An important area of future development will be Mainland China as Visa has received approval of our application to prepare from the People's Bank of China. This significant milestone now marks the beginning of our formal preparations to ultimately process domestically on the Visa network. Another core aspect of our network and infrastructure is enabling new capabilities including blockchain. In 2026, we gained even greater conviction in the opportunity and benefits of extending our network on chain. Our vision is simple. One network combining FIOP, stablecoins and tokenized deposits with interoperability and utility across our infrastructure, bringing the same ease and trust clients expect for Visa. It requires key capabilities across the full on chain stack, which we have made significant progress on this year. Specific highlights this quarter include for the blockchain layer, we were invited to the founding validator cohort for Circle's ARC, adding to our roles on Tempo as a Validator and Canton as a super Validator.

For the issuance layer, Open USD went live on September 30, with total supply and circulation surpassing $800 million so far through October 15. In the orchestration layer, Visa Direct's stablecoin prefunding and cross-border money movement has moved from pilot to commercial production, and we have our first live partner, Inyo Global, a U.S.-based payments infrastructure provider.

In the application layer, our Visa stablecoin platform is now available in the U.S., Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Switzerland and the U.K. with additional countries to follow and the pipeline has more than 300 partners. And the engagement we are seeing with our more established stable coin offerings is significant.

In stable coin settlement, our run rate has surpassed $25 billion in annualized volume, up 10x year-over-year. We can now support 10 blockchains more than doubling from last year and are operating in all five regions. In consulting, with over 60 unique engagements, stablecoin advisory was our fastest-growing Visa consulting and analytics practice this year, with nearly half of these projects in Q4 alone. And it continues to be among the top 3 focus areas for our clients alongside AI and cybersecurity.

We now have over 225 stablecoin linked card programs, up more than 70% year-over-year with 150% plus growth in volume across 5 million cards in more than 50 countries with issuers across crypto exchanges, neobanks, wallets and remitters. That is trust at scale. And the trust that the Visa network and infrastructure represent is only amplified by the products we provide on top of it.

I spoke last quarter about the fundamental changes to the way that we build and ship products enabled by utilizing our Agentic tool chain. For example, the Visa stablecoin platform enablement for O-USD was designed, built and shipped in 7 weeks with 12 people. This would have taken much, much longer and required many more people without utilizing our genetic tool chain. Today, more than 60% of our global product development and engineering teams have adopted this new way of working with the intent of reaching 100% this year. One of the key areas of innovation for Visa has been empowering Agentic Commerce. It is clear that in Agentic, trust is the biggest barrier to scale. We believe the best way to break through that barrier is with one simple but powerful idea. Every time someone pays or gets paid, it's with a Visa credential. And as we look at the albeit limited number of agentic transactions today, Visa credentials are being used by consumers, businesses and agents. We have nearly 50 AI partners live and in production including more recently Shopify's Shop Pay with that number expected to double in the coming months. We are also collaborating with Anthropic to bring their commerce blueprints to our merchant network, combining the intelligence of Claude with the trust, security and global reach of the Visa network.

One of the areas we have identified for fast adoption of Agentic has been B2B, and we have had several partners launch and expand offerings. Ramps Agenetic Bill Pay use case is now generally available and as Ramp businesses use Visa Intelligent Commerce to automate bill payments, payments volume is growing. Air wallets is testing Visa Intelligent commerce-enabled credentials and integrating them into their native wallet Aerie. Bill's payment agent is piloting Visa Intelligent commerce to pay invoices and Billtrust supplier portal will identify the agent and accept payment. Our Visa Intelligence commerce solution is enabling all of this. It provides trust for the user with credentials, Agentic tokens and transaction identifiers. Trust for the agent with the trusted agent protocol and agent directory, and trust for the transaction.

Once we have verified the user and agent identity, we need to make sure that the purchase instructions are clear by capturing consumer authenticated intent. And of course, like on any Visa transaction, our rules clarify the roles and responsibilities and processes should something go wrong. It is clear that Agentic Commerce is here, and Visa's role is clear, delivering trust. Another important area of product development has been in our value-added services. In fiscal 2026, our VAS business grew revenue 30% in constant dollars to $14 billion essentially double our 2023 VAS revenue. Our issuing acceptance and risk and security portfolios collectively grew more than 20% in constant dollars this year a growth rate, we believe, is sustainable in 2027 for 2 primary reasons: the underlying drivers of revenue and demand from clients. I'll go deeper into each one.

First, Transactions, cards and accounts had driven the vast majority of our VAS revenue, more than 80% over the last 5 years, and that will continue as our clients grow, we expand to new clients and develop new products and we were able to price those products to value. For example, Pismo signed clients in Sweden, Belgium and Guatemala this quarter, bringing the total for the year to 28 countries, almost doubling from last year. Our success has enabled us to sell more products fueled by these underlying drivers.

Now to demand. Cyber-related products are a top priority for our clients. We offer many end-to-end cyber solutions, including several launch this year, and we will continue to invest more over time. The associated revenue spans across the VAS portfolios and represents a meaningful amount of total VAS revenue. We delivered these cyber solutions in 4 areas, all bringing trust to the ecosystem. One, helping our clients collect threat intelligence and detect cyber problems early; two, protecting our client security perimeter with identity access and behavioral trust solutions; three, ensuring every transaction on and off the Visa network is safe with transaction intelligence solutions; and four, when an active threat does emerge, enabling our clients to maintain service resilience and recover as quickly as possible.

In Threat Intelligence, our Visa Threat Intelligence platform combines cyber, fraud, brand identity and financial crime insights through high fidelity feeds. We connect these indicators to potential fraud outcomes to help our clients defend against would-be attackers. We also recently invested in Overwatch data, a financial threat intelligence company whose solutions we will soon be offering to our clients globally. In identity access and behavioral trust, our authentication and tokenization platforms protect consumer credentials, payment transactions and merchants and acquirers sensitive data. And we are excited about our pending acquisition of BioCatch a leading provider of behavioral first multi signal fraud intelligence with over 1.8 billion devices and 760 million users protected around the world, and serving more than 100 of the largest banks globally. We see the opportunity and need to move further upstream, protecting where most of the fraud occurs today at the account level.

In Transaction Intelligence, we are enhancing our scaled transaction risk services like Visa Advanced Authorization and Visa Decision Manager with our large transaction model. And our feature-based solution offers clients a flexible platform to integrate a wide range of risk signals to enrich risk decisions throughout the consumer journey. And in recovery and resilience smarter stand in processing enables clients to deliver seamless, resilient transaction authorization services and the newly launched Visa Intelligent authorization empowers acquirers with advanced processing, payment orchestration, risk settings and real-time data across multiple local and global payment methods. Of course, this list is not exhaustive and with all of this, we offer our Visa cybersecurity advisory practice to help clients review, design and select the best solutions for them. Our advisory and other capabilities had significant revenue growth this year with successful activation around the Olympics and FIFA and also around other sponsorships in sports and music and our other highly valued consulting engagements. These underlying set of assets and capabilities in this portfolio will drive strong revenue growth well into the future.

Across all our value-added services, we have the people, technology, data brand assets and reach that our customers are looking for. That is what drove the 30% VAS constant dollar revenue growth in 2026 and is why we expect strong VAS growth in the low- to mid-20s in 2027. 2026 was a historic year for payments and Visa only strengthened our positioning in the ecosystem as the leading hyperscaler of payments globally. We demonstrated our ability to significantly accelerate product development, with the true birth of tokenized Agenetic Commerce transactions powered by Visa, with blockchain infrastructure and platforms designed for payments, with the increased utilization of AI across our business, to deliver over 350 product releases, up 25% year-over-year. We reached new customers with Tap to Phone, Pismo, our B2B travel and fleet offerings, new affluent solutions and cyber and risk capabilities like Featurespace and A2A Portect, and with the first transaction in Syria in well over a decade.

We delivered secure, reliable payments nearly 9,000 transactions per second in over 200 countries and territories every day, up 9% year-over-year. We brought the best of Visa technology to the world for free with the Visa Vulnerability Agentic Harness. All of this was possible because of what Visa and our brands stand for. Every day, across more than 200 countries and territories, over 18 billion endpoints and more than 400 million seller in wallet locations across consumers, businesses, governments and agents, trust enables all of this. We've seen meaningful growth acceleration this year. And as I look ahead to 2027, one thing is clear, Trust is the next growth vector for Visa. Trust fuels everything we do at Visa every day, and trust will fuel our future. For more on our 2026 performance and our thoughts on 2027, I will hand it over to Chris.

Christopher Suh

Thanks, Ryan, and good afternoon, everyone. We closed out our strong fiscal year 2026 with another impressive quarter for Visa. Fiscal fourth quarter net revenue was up 13% year-over-year in nominal and constant dollars, in line with our expectations, reflecting broad-based strength across all our key drivers. In constant dollars, Global Payments volume was up 9% year-over-year. Cross-border volume excluding intra-Europe was up 14%. And total processed transactions grew 10%. EPS was up 17% year-over-year in nominal and constant dollars, better than expected, primarily due to a lower-than-expected tax rate.

Now let's go into the details. U.S. payments volume grew 10% year-over-year, generally consistent with Q3 as we saw several factors from Q3 continuing to play a role, including the cost of fuel, retail, strong Visa Direct growth and FIFA-related spend. From the FIFA World Cup round of 32 matches on July 1 through the final on July 19, we continued to see both U.S. host cities as well as destination cities benefit from the influx of FIFA fans with total U.S. card-present spend payments volume growth elevated above pre- and post-tournament levels. For the quarter, both the U.S. discretionary and nondiscretionary spend growth remained strong.

Fourth quarter U.S. credit grew 11% year-over-year and debit grew 9%. Growth across consumer spend bands remained relatively consistent with prior quarters with the highest spend band continuing to grow the fastest. We did not see signs of the lower spend consumer weakening in our volumes. Fourth quarter total international payments volume was up 9% year-over-year in constant dollars, generally consistent with the growth we've seen all year.

Now to cross-border volume, which I'll speak to in constant dollars and excluding intra-Europe transactions. Q4 total cross-border volume was up 14% year-over-year, more than 2 points above Q3. And primarily due to travel. Travel-related cross-border volume was up 13%, 3 points of acceleration from Q3, primarily driven by improvements in both CEMEA, inbound and outbound. Overall, U.S. inbound cross-border growth for July remained elevated following strong growth in June, reflecting in part the demand around the FIFA World Cup. Focusing on inbound cross-border card presence spend, U.S. host cities increased by over 20% year-over-year from July 1 to July 19, with the most significant increases driven by fans from Argentina and Colombia. Cross-border e-commerce volume was up 17%, more than 1 point above Q3, primarily driven by retail, including spending on AI platforms.

With that as a backdrop, I'll move to discuss our financial results. Starting first with the revenue components. Service revenue grew 14% year-over-year, above the 10% growth in Q3 constant dollar payments volume primarily due to pricing. Data processing revenue grew 16%, above the 10% growth in process transactions, primarily due to pricing, higher cross-border transaction mix and value-added services. International transaction revenue was up 8%, below that 14% increase in constant dollar cross-border volume growth, excluding intra-Europe, primarily due to lower volatility levels than last year and mix.

Other revenue grew 40%, primarily driven by growth in advisory and other value-added services, especially marketing services revenue as well as pricing. Client incentives grew 21%, a step-up of nearly 3 points from Q3, primarily due to new deals that were signed in Q3 and early in Q4.

Now to our three growth engines. Consumer Payments revenue was driven by strong payments volume, cross-border volume and process transactions growth. Commercial and Money Movement solutions revenue grew 16% year-over-year in constant dollars with strong growth in the underlying drivers. Commercial payments volume grew 13% in constant dollars, consistent with Q3 and faster than Visa's overall payments volume growth. Visa Direct transactions grew 23% year-over-year, up nearly 2 points from Q3, primarily due to strength in the U.S. and LAC. Value-added services revenue grew 31% year-over-year in constant dollars to $4 billion, driven by 3 factors: One, underlying business drivers, which included strength in marketing services engagements related to FIFA; two, pricing; and three, the acquisition of Prisma.

Operating expenses grew 12%, consistent with our expectations, driven primarily by marketing and personnel expenses. Nonoperating expense was $57 million, better than expected, primarily due to higher average cash balances. Our tax rate for the quarter was 18.4%, lower than our expectations due to claim of right tax benefits related to recent legal settlements. EPS was $3.48, up 17% year-over-year, better than expected with minimal impact from exchange rates. For our non-GAAP results, Pismo and New Pay added approximately 1 point to net revenue growth, approximately 2 points to operating expense growth and approximately 0.5 point to EPS growth.

In Q4, we bought back $4 billion in stock and distributed $1.3 billion in dividends to our shareholders. We also funded the litigation escrow account by $405 million, which has the same effect as a stock buyback. At the end of September, we had $24.4 billion remaining in our buyback authorization.

Looking at the full year 2026. Net revenue grew 15% to $46 billion, and EPS grew 16% to $13.27. Full year 2026 CMS revenue growth was 19%, and value-added services revenue growth was 30% on a constant dollar basis. This foundation of strong growth will continue in 2027.

So let's get into the guidance details. And a quick note, when I referenced 2026 and 2027, I'm referring to our fiscal years. And remember that our guidance is on an adjusted basis, defined as non-GAAP results in constant dollars and excluding acquisition impacts. You can review these disclosures in our earnings presentation for more detail. We are still working through regulatory approvals on BioCatch and expect to close no later than the end of the fiscal second quarter, upon which we will provide the expected financial impact.

Now let's cover our underlying assumptions for net revenue growth. As we regularly say, we're not economic forecasters, so we're assuming the macroeconomic environment stays generally where it is today and consumer spending remains resilient. The Middle East conflict brings continued near-term uncertainty, in particular, to SEMEA cross-border travel spend, and our assumptions are that those volumes remain generally indexed to where they were in Q4. This implies key business drivers will be strong and improved modestly from 2026 as we lap the impact of the conflict in the Middle East from last year.

On pricing, for 2027, we expect the benefits of new pricing to be similar in magnitude and timing as in 2026, with the majority going into effect in the back half even more so than in 2026.

On volatility, we expect volatility throughout the year to be generally consistent with Q4 of 2026, which implies a drag for the full year. Q1 is expected to have a slight benefit, and Q2 is expected to have the largest drag followed by Q3.

On incentives, 2027 will be an important year in securing our long-term client relationships to drive long-term success. As we're expecting around 25% of our payments volume to be renewed, including renewals with several large clients. This implies a step-up in the year-over-year growth rate from 2026.

Pulling this all together with strength across our growth pillars of consumer CMS and VAS, we expect full year adjusted net revenue growth to be in the low double digits, with Q2 being the growth low point as a result of lapping the very strong performance last year.

Now moving to expenses. As Ryan highlighted, Visa brings trust with our scale, our networking infrastructure and our products, all delivered through our Visa as a Service stack. In 2027, we will continue to invest across each of these areas focused on driving sustainable long-term growth. Let me share a few examples. On scale, we will continue investing to grow credentials, drive token adoption, expand acceptance, increase our reach in money movement and enhance our affluent and cross-border offerings, while deepening our presence in key markets around the world.

On network and infrastructure, we will continue investing to strengthen the security and resilience of VisaNet and further develop our on chain infrastructure across FIOP, stablecoins and tokenized deposits. And for our products, we'll continue investing to advance Agentic Commerce, expand our offerings for small and lower middle market businesses and accelerate product development across value-added services. By driving operational efficiency in our business, we're able to make these important investments and can sustain industry-leading operating margins.

For 2027, we currently expect to grow adjusted operating expense in the low double digits, modestly below net revenue growth. As we think about the cadence of spend, we expect adjusted operating expense growth to be relatively consistent each quarter with a moderation in the fourth quarter as we lap FIFA-related spending.

Now moving to nonoperating expense, which is expected to be between $250 million and $300 million, primarily as a result of lower cash balances. Our tax rate is expected to be about 19%, consistent with our long-term tax rate range of 19% to 20%, up from 2026, primarily due to the lack of claim of right benefits.

On capital return, the Board has declared an increase in our quarterly dividend of 16%, and we intend to return excess free cash flow to shareholders through buybacks. All of this results in our adjusted EPS growth to be in the low double digits to low teens.

Moving to Q1. But first to comment on monthly drivers. You may recall that we began providing intra-quarter driver data during the pandemic to give greater visibility into the trends during a period of significant volatility. As the environment has largely normalized for some time now, we believe quarterly trends provide a more meaningful view of the underlying performance of our business. As a result, we will continue to provide monthly drivers data in our earnings presentation through fiscal Q1 and after which we will transition back to quarterly reporting. We will, of course, continue to highlight meaningful intra-quarter trends in a [ Reg FD ] compliant manner when we believe prudent to do so.

Now let's look at the drivers through October 21, with volume growth in constant dollars. U.S. payments volume was up 10%, with credit up 11% and debit up 9% year-over-year. For constant dollar cross-border volume, excluding transactions within Europe, total volume grew 15% year-over-year with e-commerce up 17% and travel up 13%. Processed transactions grew 10% year-over-year.

Now moving to Q1 financial expectations, which again are on an adjusted basis. We expect Q1 net revenue growth in the low double digits, just under 1 point below Q4 adjusted net revenue growth, primarily due to a lack of FIFA-related revenue and pricing. We expect Q1 operating expense growth also in the low double digits, modestly below net revenue growth. Nonoperating expense is expected to be about $60 million. And our tax rate in the first quarter is expected to be between 18.5% and 19%. As a result, we expect first quarter EPS growth to be in the low end of mid-teens. As always, if the environment changes and there are events that impact our business, we will remain flexible and thoughtful on balancing short- and long-term considerations. As Ryan said earlier, Trust has always been at the core of Visa, and trust will be key to our growth going forward.

As we look to 2027, we remain focused on driving top line performance, executing with discipline and investing in our strategic priorities to capture the significant opportunities ahead.

And now, Jennifer, I'll hand it back to you.

Jennifer Como

Thanks, Chris. And with that, we're ready to take questions. As a reminder, please limit yourself to only one question.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW.

Question-and-Answer Session

Sanjay Sakhrani

I guess one of the big topics this quarter was the launch of initiatives like me and Instinct. And it seems like the pace of adoption of Agentic experiences seem to have accelerated. I'm just curious what, Ryan, you guys are seeing in terms of merchant and consumer adoption? And like when do you expect it to actually affect your results in terms of these token initiatives, et cetera?

Ryan McInerney

I agree, Sanjay, that the quarter was a bit of a tipping point on users being able to experience the type of things we've been talking about on calls like this in other forums for a while now, where you can actually have an agent who can go out on your behalf and execute not just shopping but real transactions and do it either with or without a human in loop. And I think both views and instinct experiences are good examples of that. I think it's still very early. If you just look at just even the user numbers that are public for [ muse, ] it's still very early in terms of the number of consumers that are doing this. And certainly, in the big scheme of things in our overall business, it's a very small amount. Having said that, we remain very excited and have deep conviction about Agentic Commerce and the promise that it offers, not just for buyers and sellers, but for Visa. Second, we still have high conviction that Visa and our credentials will play an extraordinarily important role in enabling these experiences. And we're glad that during the quarter, people who don't study the industry, Sanjay, like you and others on the call and we do, are starting to see the very early use cases and examples of how powerful this can be both for buyers and sellers. So we're continuing to invest. We continue to have conviction. We'll continue to work hard across the ecosystem to enable these experiences. And over time, we're optimistic about the impact that it will have.

Operator

James Faucette with Morgan Stanley.

James Faucette

I wanted to ask kind of a follow-on question related to how you're investing in Agentic Commerce and all the new money movement capabilities. As these flows continue to develop, how much of an opportunity do you expect to genuinely be incremental to Visa versus potentially a migration of existing card volumes? And as we look at '27, do we expect any of these to start to have a meaningful impact on growth or the total P&L?

Ryan McInerney

I think I'll kind of come back to where I was, Sanjay, it's still very early. So we do have conviction that the opportunity is significant. We do have conviction that there's real incremental opportunities. But as we think about the next 4 quarters in '27, it all remains very small in the big scheme of the enormous size of our business. There are a couple of other notes in terms of where we see incremental opportunities. One, you mentioned some of the work we've been doing on Visa Direct and things like that. Those are big incremental opportunities. Two, when you think about machine-to-machine payments and the CLI as a commerce interface, there's a lot of incremental opportunities there. And then just more broadly, in the big scheme of things with Agenetic Commerce, are agents finding more buying opportunities for us. Our agents making more purchases at more seller locations because they're optimizing based on value, speed, delivery like whatever it is important to the user, those are opportunities. So I think we remain very excited and have conviction about the opportunities, but I think we all just need to realize that the development of all of this is still quite early.

Operator

Ken Suchoski with Autonomous Research.

Kenneth Suchoski

I wanted to ask just on token pricing, and it's very high margin revenue building in fiscal year '27. The guide has a sort of low double-digit revenue growth, low double-digit OpEx growth, EPS sort of low double digits to low teens. I was just curious, like, like how much token pricing are you embedded in the guide? We're just getting to some questions as to why there's not more EPS growth, if you could just comment on that. Just is the -- is that pricing being reinvested? Or are there offsets on incentives or anything else we should be aware of?

Ryan McInerney

Hi, Ken. Yes, there's a few different things there. Let me try to address each of them or at least cover your main points. In terms of pricing, I outlined our assumptions on pricing in our guide, the low double-digit adjusted net revenue guide for FY '27. It assumes that the contribution to growth from pricing in '27 is consistent with what we saw in '26. That does include all the pricing plans that we have in motion today. And also, I did note that in terms of the timing that it's slightly more back half loaded in as well. So that's one. I think you touched on a couple of other things, which ultimately sort of laddered up to an EPS point. On incentives, you brought that one up as well. Incentives, we are anticipating a higher volume of incentives in '27. About 25% of our PV will be renewed versus the 20% we saw in '26. As we said many times, we manage our business to drive net revenue growth, and we have a strong plan for '27. And so as you think about incentives, remember, incentives are tool. They're a tool that lets us align with a common set of goals and priorities with our partners as we work together to continue to grow the shared business. And in fact, when we have higher incentive volumes and growth, it does lead -- it does ensure that we're securing these client relationships over the long period and is a key ingredient to our long-term growth. And then finally, you touched on a little bit of the EPS point. We continue to drive productivity growth. We've been focused, as you know, as we said many times, we're focused on driving both strong top line growth and profit growth as we did in '26, delivering 15% net revenue growth and 16% EPS growth in order to continue to do that to grow in our consumer payments business and accelerate the growth in VAS and CMS, it is necessary that we continue to invest in those growth opportunities. And so as you've noticed in our guide for next year, we are continuing to become more efficient, and we're continuing to invest in these growth opportunities. And when we do that, I think we can continue to drive top line and bottom line growth.

Operator

Bill Carcache with Piper Sandler.

Bill Carcache

Following up on your commentary around the significant renewals expected in 2027. As more of your clients leverage your VAS offerings, what are the areas as you look to the new year in particular that you're most excited about beyond your core capabilities? And are you seeing your strength in VAS translate into a deepening of the stickiness in your client relationships?

Ryan McInerney

Yes. Bill, it's Ryan. In short, yes. Our -- and I would kind of expand it to include both VAS and our CMS offerings. The nature of the client agreements that we are engaged in as we kind of migrated into our 2027 fiscal year, they're much broader they're much deeper and they include a much more comprehensive set of both value-added services and CMS services such as Visa Direct, some of the commercial and small business offerings I mentioned in our prepared remarks, all in addition to, of course, our consumer payments capabilities. And what these broader agreements do is they create a stronger, tighter, deeper hopefully, longer lasting and more comprehensive client relationship with our clients all around the world. So yes. And then I think, finally, you asked about some of the specific things in VAS that we're excited about in that context. Well, I would point to a lot of the cyber capabilities that I mentioned on my -- in my prepared remarks, I would point to capabilities like Pismo, which are new areas where we can support our clients, both in core banking and issuer processing. I would point to the advisory work that we've talked about several times in these areas. So all of it are very, very important parts of the types of renewals that you asked about and Chris mentioned.

Operator

Next question SP1 Thank you Timothy Chiodo with UBS.

Timothy Chiodo

I want to dig in a little bit, and Ryan, you hit on this, but I want to hit on this a little bit more on the Agentic network token. So our understanding is that this TOKIN is sort of a bolstered version of the network token. It's more of a scoped network token, if you will. It will have all the programmatic aspects, meaning a time window, merchant category code, dollar amount, it will have the upfront intent, as you mentioned in your prepared remarks. All of that gets kind of bundled up into the Agentic network token. The question is, how ready are the issuing banks and what do they need to do in order to say, yes, I'm willing to have an agent issue Agenic network token for one of my customers? And related, what about the merchant acquirers that are out there, the PSPs. Are they ready to accept the tokenization handshake, if you will. I know you mentioned Shop Pay is doing this, but I'm wondering about the others.

Ryan McInerney

First of all, that was a great summary of a lot of the objectives of Visa Intelligent Commerce and our agented tokens. In short, we are doing the work across the ecosystem to ensure that issuers, acquirers and other ecosystem participants are not only ready but are ready to enable these transactions at scale. And we know how to do this work. If you look at our history, even just with tokenization pre-agent commerce, this is the work that we did broadly across the world. I think I mentioned in my prepared remarks, now that we have tokenized e-commerce transactions in 200 countries and territories around the world. We know how to do this work to enable the ecosystem. I also just want to come back and build on your points around these Agentic tokens and just put it in context of what we are delivering through Visa Intelligent Commerce. First, we want to make sure that there's an identifiable user behind every agent. So these are -- this is why the identity verification and the tokenization is so important. The second thing we're trying to do is make sure that your agent is your agent, and this is why we've built the agent registration and identification capabilities. The third is that we want to make sure your agent is buying according to your instructions. So these are a lot of the data payloads that you mentioned that ladder up to the intent capture and ultimately, the biometric signature. We want to make sure that there's a clear path to resolution in the event of a problem. So disputes, rules and processes and things like that. And then finally, we want to make sure that this all works securely everywhere in the world for billions of users at scale. And that is the work that we're doing. We've announced dozens of partners that are utilizing Visa Intelligent Commerce. We're engaged with many dozens more across the ecosystem that are enablers of all this as well as all of our issuing partners and acquiring partners around the world. to try to enable it at scale.

Operator

Bryan Keane with Citi.

Bryan Keane

Solid results here. Just wanted to ask about cross-border. We've seen a little bit of stronger cross-border volumes, both in travel and then in e-comm, in particular, has kind of jumped into the -- I think it was 17%. Just curious on any details on both travel and e-com as we head into next year, how we should think about those growth rates and some of the drivers there? Bryan, yes, total cross-border volume, as you noted, it was 14% with 2 points above Q3. And that difference, as I noted in my prepared comments, was due to travel, which was up 3 points from Q3. Now that improvement was primarily due to improvements in both inbound and outbound in CEMEA. That's the primary driver, but also U.S. inbound remained strong as well in the third quarter. And then, of course, I won't repeat it, but you noted the strength in cross-border, which was up 1 point from Q3. I Mean, when we look across the cross-border volumes in total, both travel and e-commerce, they are strong. They've been strong throughout the course of FY '26. And when we look at the history of cross-border, they're above the historical levels. I think it is reflective of strong consumer sentiment, strong demand for travel experiences and the fact that e-commerce has also just expanded and e-commerce now encompasses both discretionary and nondiscretionary things. So we're seeing strength there. Obviously, when we look out, we're assuming stable drivers, in fact, maybe a slight improvement, depending on the speed of the resolution -- potential resolution of the conflict in CEMEA, but this is something that will continue to be very watchful of. But yes, we agree with you. Cross-border in total has continued to be a strength and that's a good thing for Visa.

Operator

Next question Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research.

Darrin Peller

you mentioned you're going to be doing about 25% of the portfolio in terms of renewals in '27. And I think you did correct me if I'm wrong, 20% in 2026. A lot of the portfolio being renewed over a couple of years versus the typical 15% or so per year. But you're still able to grow low double digits. I know we often see pricing pressure on renewals. You're still guiding low double digits. So maybe just touch on the dynamics of these contracts? Is it fair to say you're seeing two big years of renewals that normally would be 15 to 20 for the years ahead? And what's driving that pricing power despite the renewals we're seeing?

Ryan McInerney

Hi, Darrin. Are, I'm glad you said that, actually. First of all, your facts are exactly right. We're looking at about 25% of our payments volume which is a bigger year than we saw in 2026, which is around the 20% mark. But the key point there, which you pointed out is we manage the business to net revenue growth. and we have a strong plan for '27 for net revenue growth in the low double digits, inclusive of all the renewal activity that we're seeing -- that we're anticipating seeing in '27. So I think that's exactly the right way to think about it. And as I said earlier in my previous answer, when we have renewal activity and we're successful in renewing it, it is a great thing for Visa over the long term. It ensures that we have long-term relationships with these very important clients, and that will help us continue to deliver strong revenue growth well into the future.

Operator

Jason Kupferberg with Wells Fargo.

Christopher Suh

Do you wanted to talk about U.S. volume growth. I mean a couple of years ago, we were down in the 5%, 6% range, and now we're trending up in the 8% to 10% neighborhood over the past few quarters. I mean clearly, inflation has helped. There's been probably a little bit of World Cup tailwind. But how much of this acceleration do you guys feel is more transitory versus being structural and sustainable? And just to the extent it's the latter, what do you really see as the main drivers there.

Ryan McInerney

It's Ryan. Maybe I'll try to take a crack at this. First of all, I think it's tough to say. We just back like zoom out a bit and put it in the context of the macro U.S. economy, we've seen strong growth, as you said, kind of an acceleration from 6%, 7%, 8%, 6, 12, 18 months ago to 10% that you referenced. I think the foundation underlying that more than anything is employment. Anyone in this country who wants a job for the most part has a job. And that strength of employment, despite consumer uncertainty is delivering the strength that you're asking about and ultimately, I think, driving the strength in spending. As I said, the uncertainty remains elevated, but in the context of strong employment, people have jobs. They have real wage growth, they are spending. And by the way, we see the resilience across the spending bands on our network. So we've seen stability in that sense. But in terms of like how strong for how long, and what the new normal is, I just think it's just too hard to tell.

Operator

Rayna Kumar with Oppenheimer.

Robert Napoli

Can you touch on the progress you're making with geographic expansion of Pismo and whether you think Pismo can make progress in core bank processing in the U.S.?

Ryan McInerney

Well, I gave -- I believe, some remarks in my prepared comments about the number of new countries and some examples of countries that we're entering with Pismo, and I would say our geographic expansion opportunities have exceeded my expectations going back to when we bought Pismo. We're having strong demand around the world from clients, both for the core banking offerings that Pismo offers, but also the issuer processing capabilities. So I think in general, our thesis on the global expansion for Pismo and having Pismo as part of the Visa network is proving out to be quite strong. In the U.S., I think I spent a fair bit of time on the last earnings call kind of going through the market, the segments, the client types, we see opportunity in the medium and low end for the combined offering that we've brought to market across DPS and Pismo for the more sophisticated clients at the larger end, the largest banks in the United States. We do see opportunities for core banking, but those clients manage core banking very separate from their other capabilities. So it tends to be more of a distinct discussion about core banking. But you asked, do we think it's possible for us to make progress in the U.S., of course. And we've had some great proof points with Wells Fargo and others that we've talked about on this call in the U.S.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Harshita Rawat with Bernstein.

Harshita Rawat

Ryan, I want to follow up on your comments on Visa cyber-related services. In the current environment, what kind of demand are you seeing on both your Visa transaction-related services and also put fiber risk beyond these transactions? And to way or even in areas like KYC, identity, et cetera? And also, this feels like a fragmented beyond [indiscernible] transactions. So what is Visa's Right to Win here?

Darrin Peller

Well, Harshita, I think our Right to Win is very significant. We bring strong client relationships. We've delivered some great products to the market. I think it's it is a somewhat fragmented competitive space around the world with a lot of different players. And this is a top 3 issue for our clients, especially our financial services clients around the world, and they're turning to Visa and looking for help. And so in our risk and security value-added services businesses. We have a vast array of these solutions that we've been bringing to market, both new and existing solutions, whether it's Visa Threat Intelligence program. Obviously, I mentioned BioCatch which we're excited about, Visa Advanced Authorization, Visa Decision Manager, those types of things. But if you broaden it to our other areas, as I alluded to and mentioned on my prepared remarks, we're having success deploying and delivering revenue from these services in our acceptance business with our authentication and tokenization platforms with Visa Intelligent authorization, which, as I think I mentioned in my prepared remarks, Empower's acquirers with advanced processing and payment orchestration and risk settings and real-time data across a bunch of different capabilities. So as well as our advisory business in terms of our kind of Visa cybersecurity advisory practice and even in our issuing business with examples like smarter stand and processing. So it's become a really important set of service lines and services across our entire suite of as services. I think our right to win is high. Our progress to date is good, and we'll continue to invest in this space going forward.

Operator

Andrew Jeffrey with William Blair.

Andrew Jeffrey

Ryan, I read with some interest the Visa Direct stablecoin launch. I know you mentioned it in your prepared remarks. The press release notes that you're going to prefund cross-border payouts with USDC, at least for starters. And I know you're part of the open standard consortium. Can you talk a little bit about some of your thoughts around whether -- just how stable quite you going to be thoughts on liquidity factors that might impact the incorporation of other stablecoins and so forth. Just some high level thoughts there would be helpful.

Ryan McInerney

Sure. We're very excited about the Visa Direct product that you mentioned, but just trying to get to the core of your question, we are stablecoin agnostic. We are blockchain agnostic. We serve a vast array of clients with different preferences and different needs around the world. And so in that particular example, while we started with UC we plan to activate other stablecoins as we push forward. I mean if you just look at maybe our settlement as an example, I think I mentioned in our prepared remarks, we now support 10 blockchains in settlement. We now support 5 stablecoins in settlement USDC, USDG, EURC, PYUSD and SBC. We have lots of clients who have them for different needs around the world. So we will be agnostic. We think that's the right approach. But we also, as you noted, we are part of the open consortium. We are part of O-USD. O-USD will also, and you should assume, will be an integrated offering into all these other products, not just settlement, but Visa Direct and others going forward.

Operator

Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan Chase.

Tien-Tsin Huang

I'll close it out with my favorite question on visibility, if you don't mind. So '26 was a pretty special year for growth, Ryan and Chris. I'm thinking about '27, how would you characterize visibility on growth versus this time last year? Where is visibility higher? Where is it weaker? Where might you be more cautious?

Christopher Suh

Hi, Tien-Tsin. Listen, the approach that we've taken to sharing our initial guide for '27 is very similar to that, that we took at the start of FY '26. We shared the initial guidance. We also shared with you a set of planning assumptions that underlie that. Some of those assumptions are macro, like assuming consumer resiliency and the drivers remain stable and healthy. others are dependent on our strong execution, like securing the large volume of client contracts that are up for renewal this year. And so you think about those things. And of course, like with any plan, there are risks and opportunities. But the plan we shared with you, I think, reflects a balance point of view that takes all that into account. And when you put it together, we feel really good about our plan going into FY '27.

Jennifer Como

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

Operator

Thank you all for participating in the Visa Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2026 Earnings Conference Call. That concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect at this time, and please enjoy the rest of your day.