Cross-border volumes continued to drive revenue growth for Visa and Mastercard in calendar Q2 23 (Q3 23 for Visa), on the back of resilient spending and continued appetite for travel. However, YoY volumes grew at a slower rate this year, mainly as a result of a more difficult comparison to last year’s post-Covid travel boom, according to FCXintelligence.
Visa Q3 2023 highlights
. Revenues increased by 12% to $8.1bn, largely on the back of YoY growth in payments volume (9%), cross-border volume (17%, though excluding intra-Europe growth this was 22%) and processed transactions (10% to 54 billion).
. International transaction revenues increased by 14%, significantly slower growth than last year. Visa Direct saw 20% transaction growth during Q3, with transactions amounting to $1.8bn.
. Visa made one of the largest acquisitions in the space this year, buying Brazilian payments provider Pismo for $1bn.
. Visa didn’t give a specific update on B2B Connect – its platform specifically for cross-border business transactions. However, with regards to B2B in general, executives said that the company was ‘scratching the surface’ with regards to the commercial TAM, which they estimated was roughly $1.5tn of payments volume. Visa also mentioned a new partnership with Alchemy Pay in Mexico, which will enable cross-border B2B payments for thousands of businesses in the country.
Mastercard Q2 2023 highlights
. Revenues increased by 14% to $6.3bn. Payment network net revenues increased 13%, partly driven by a 24% increase in cross-border volumes.
. Cross-border assessments – the charges based on activity related to cards that carry Mastercard’s brands where the merchant country and the country of issuance are different – increased by 29% on a currency-neutral basis.
. Mastercard is seeing faster growth across payment card volumes from the rest of the world (16% growth) than in the US (6% growth).
. For Mastercard Send, the company’s network play supporting cross-border transfers to cards, the focus has been on adding new markets, including Chile, Bahrain and Slovakia in H1 2023. Mastercard has also formed a new partnership with Qatar-based remittances player Al Fardan Exchange.
. On B2B play Mastercard Cross-Border Services, the company did not provide a significant update but did highlight the introduction of Cross-Border Services Express, which is designed to speed up the onboarding of new customers.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
