The news: Visa’s total payments volume increased 9% YoY in Q1 2025 (ending December 31, 2024), a slight acceleration from 8% YoY growth the year prior, per its earnings release.

• Debit card volume grew 10% YoY, while credit volume grew 8% YoY.
• International volume increased 11% YoY, versus 7% in the US.

Strong payment growth helped boost the network’s overall revenues. Visa’s net revenues increased 10% YoY in Q1 2025.

Here’s what propelled payments volume growth:

Strong holiday shopping

• “In the US, consumer holiday spending growth was in the upper mid-single digits on a year-over-year basis,” per CFO Chris Suh.
• Discretionary categories including retail, travel, and entertainment led growth.

New international card partnerships

• Visa launched a bevy of new consumer credit cards like one with digital bank Neon in Brazil.
• Visa is also trying to take volume from local networks: It partnered with Dutch Bangla Bank to take over 6 million credentials in Bangladesh, for example.
• Visa also launched new international co-brand credit cards, including the Times Black ICICI Bank and HSBC Taj credit cards in India.

Non-card payments

• Visa’s non-card payments got a boost from Visa Direct. Transactions grew 34% YoY in Q1. Visa Direct surpassed 10 billion transactions in 2024.
• Ecuador's Banco Pichincha began using Visa Direct for remittances in Q1.
• Visa also partnered with X Money. In addition to offering peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, Visa CEO Ryan McInerney also said the solution will help X creators get paid faster. The companies are also working on other use cases.

What’s next? Visa is preparing to launch account-to-account (A2A) payments in Europe early this year. The initial use case is bill pay, but it will expand to other payment types in the future, McInerney said.

Our take: Strong international and non-card growth helps diversify Visa’s revenue and volume streams. We forecast Visa’s US card network transaction value will total $6.837 trillion this year, up 7% YoY.

And it will help Visa maintain its momentum moving forward as it faces threats like swipe fee litigation and potential new competition from the Capital One and Discover merger.

This article is part of EMARKETER’s client-only subscription Briefings—daily newsletters authored by industry analysts who are experts in marketing, advertising, media, and tech trends. To help you start 2025 off on the right foot, articles like this one—delivering the latest news and insights—are completely free through January 31, 2025. If you want to learn how to get insights like these delivered to your inbox every day, and get access to our data-driven forecasts, reports, and industry benchmarks, schedule a demo with our sales team.