Visa
Three growth pillars, Long-term growth
Our purpose is to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid
Three growth pillars
Visa earned $40.0 billion of net revenue in the year to September 2025, on $17 trillion of payments and cash volume and nearly 5 billion cards and other credentials. Its strategy is to accelerate revenue growth through three pillars: consumer payments, commercial and money movement solutions, and value-added services, while it fortifies the foundations of its business, from its brand to its people.
Consumer payments
Strengthen card payments and reach payments made without a card.
- 01Tap to EverythingExtend Tap to Pay into Tap to Everything: tapping a phone to take payments, to add a card to a wallet, to send money, and to confirm a risky purchase.
- 02TokensAdd identity-based authentication to its tokens, including a solution for agentic commerce, where AI agents buy on people’s behalf.
- 03Underserved spendPursue the more than $20 trillion a year of consumer spending it estimates still goes through cash, cheques, and less effective digital payments.
6 November 2025Tap to Pay made up 79% of Visa’s face-to-face transactions worldwide in fiscal 2025, and 66% in the US.
6 November 2025Visa had issued more than 16 billion tokens by 30 September 2025.
28 July 2026In the quarter to June 2026, payments volume grew 10% and cross-border volume 13%, in constant dollars.
Pillar 1 of 3
Visa puts payments beyond consumer spending at about $200 trillion a year
It sees more than $40 trillion a year of consumer spending it can address, half of it still underserved, and about $200 trillion a year moving between businesses, people, and governments. Each chip is $1 trillion a year.
Consumer spending, more than $40 trillion
Commercial and money movement, about $200 trillion
Each chip is $1 trillion of payments a year, by Visa’s estimates. The three named parts of the $200 trillion are those Visa gives; it does not break down the rest.
Size each opportunity in the same units.
Visa puts a figure on the market behind each pillar: more than $20 trillion a year of underserved consumer spending, about $200 trillion of other payment flows, and about $520 billion a year of revenue in services, split again by portfolio. We recommend sizing every pillar, so that the plan shows which bets are large and the team can see why each one is worth the effort.
Rename a pillar when its job changes.
Visa used to call its second pillar new flows; it now calls it commercial and money movement solutions, which says what the pillar sells and to whom. We recommend renaming a pillar once it stops being new, because a name that describes the work keeps people from treating a large business as an experiment.
Keep the foundations in the plan.
Beside its three pillars, Visa lists the foundations it means to fortify: its brand, product innovation, platforms and security, government affairs, sales and service, and its people. We recommend naming the foundations a plan stands on next to its pillars, so that work on them is counted as part of the strategy and not squeezed out by it.
Sources
- 1. Visa Inc. (2025). Annual Report on Form 10-K, fiscal year ended September 30, 2025. Annual report, 6 November 2025. sec.gov
- 2. Visa Inc. (2026). Visa Reports Fiscal Third Quarter 2026 Results. Results statement, 28 July 2026. sec.gov
- 3. Visa Inc. (2026). Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, quarter ended June 30, 2026. Quarterly report, 29 July 2026. sec.gov
Headwater is not connected with Visa Inc. Visa, Visa Direct, Visa+, Tap to Pay, and Featurespace are trade marks of their owners. Updated 5 October 2026.