By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Visa stock (NYSE:V) traded 4% higher in premarket Friday as strong growth in ecommerce and an uptick in international travel helped the company drive past first-quarter estimates.
Payments volume, cross-border volume and processed transaction growth all accelerated on a year-on-year basis, the company said.
Visa processed nearly 48 billion transactions in the quarter through December, a 21% increase. The company said recovery in international travel was better than expected and said it doesn’t expect the current surge in Covid cases to curtail that. Cross-border volumes were up 40% in the first quarter.
"The upside is going to come from the continued recovery of travel and the affluent customer getting back in the mix of spending at the levels they were pre-pandemic,” Reuters quoted Visa Chairman and Chief Executive Alfred Kelly as telling analysts in a call.
Visa’s net revenue rose 24% to $7.1 billion while net profit was higher by 25% at $3.9 billion. This compares with rival Mastercard's (NYSE:MA) net profit of $2.4 billion on revenue of $5.2 billion for its most recent quarter.
Visa said it has completed the acquisition of Currencycloud, a foreign exchange platform.