Despite a contraction in payments volume, Visa Inc. handily beat estimates for its fiscal second quarter as its profits rose almost 71%.
Visa, which reported the results after the market closed Wednesday, said it made $536 million, or 71 cents a share, for the quarter that ended March 31. The average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had called for the San Francisco payments company to post a profit of 64 cents a share.
However, debit and credit volume on its network contracted 1% from a year earlier, to $675 billion, in the quarter that ended Dec. 31. (Visa reports business volume on a lagging basis.)
