SAN FRANCISCO – Visa Inc. said first quarter earnings soared 35%, to $599 million, as cards transactions both in the U.S. and internationally maintained their growth.
Visa said its revenue rose 17% in the first quarter to almost $1.74 billion, from $1.49 billion in the same period last year.
For the company’s fiscal first quarter the number of transactions surged by 13% to 14.5 trillion, while the payments volume grew 12% to $701 billion. The number of cards in use worldwide rose by 10% to 1.7 billion.
In the first quarter Visa used $1.5 billion from its 2008 initial public offering to redeem 35.3 million Class C shares from its bank and credit union owners. It also deposited $1.1 billion into a legal reserve fund which will be used to settle a number of antitrust suits brought by competitors and merchant customers.
