Visa Inc.'s profits jumped by a third in its fiscal first quarter, which ended Dec. 31, and use of the company's debit and credit cards picked up in the U.S.
U.S. payment volume on Visa-branded cards rose 7.2% from a year earlier, to $438 billion in the period, the San Francisco payments company said Wednesday. That was an improvement over the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended Sept. 30, when payment volume in the U.S. dipped 1% year-over-year, to $417 billion.
Net income jumped 33% in the fiscal first quarter, to $763 million, or $1.02 a share, handily beating the average per-share estimate of 91 cents from analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.
Service revenue, based on the payment volumes generated by Visa's bank customers in the previous quarter, rose 4% from a year earlier, to $827 million in the quarter ended Dec. 31. Total revenue, which includes international transaction and data processing revenue, increased 13%, to $1.96 billion.
The company also said it expects revenue to grow 11% to 15% this year. In October, Visa gave the same range but said growth was more likely to be on the low end; this time it left out that caveat.
