Visa Inc. Class A

Consumer artificial intelligence agents could reshape online shopping, payments and financial services, but their success will depend on how established companies respond, according to Bernstein. The rapid growth of Muse, which can compare products and quotes, call businesses, send emails, fill forms, manage inboxes, cancel subscriptions and negotiate for users, has fuelled speculation about an "iPhone moment" for consumer AI, with OpenAI launching Dots and Google expected to improve Spark. Amazon blocked Muse within two weeks of launch, citing lack of prior notification, failure to identify itself, apparent collection of customer credentials and access to account pages and order histories, while others including Shopify, Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, Wayfair, Dick's Sporting Goods, Ulta Beauty, Fanatics, Expedia and Instacart have partnered with Muse for shopping and checkout. Bernstein expects selective access rather than blanket blocking, and Muse is developing API connectors with retailers, although it currently mainly browses websites, fills forms and prepares orders for user confirmation. Cloudflare says AI-agent requests on its network rose over 1,700% in a year, while human traffic in heavily crawled retail and financial-services categories fell as much as 40%, and Bernstein sees payments as a potential winner, with more online transactions potentially benefiting Visa, Mastercard and processors Stripe, Adyen and Checkout.

Visa closed at $385.45, up 2.76% and ahead of the S&P 500's 0.6% gain, with the Dow up 0.83% and the Nasdaq up 0.64%. The payments processor's shares have risen 2.15% over the past month, beating the Business Services sector's 2.9% decline and trailing the S&P 500's 1.34% gain. Visa is expected to report quarterly EPS of $3.43, up 15.1% from a year earlier, on revenue of $12.07 billion, up 12.59%, when it releases results on October 27, 2026. For the full fiscal year, consensus estimates project earnings of $13.22 per share and revenue of $45.83 billion, representing increases of 15.26% and 14.58%, respectively. Visa carries a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy) and trades at a forward P/E of 25.04, a premium to its industry average of 14.68.

Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach said the clearest use case for stablecoins today is in cross-border payments, telling Bloomberg TV that such transfers take days and carry unclear fees. "If you make a cross-border payment, it takes days; the fees are unclear. From a working capital perspective for a company, if you could move the money instantly, it would be so much better," Miebach reportedly said. Mastercard, alongside Visa, Stripe and other partners, launched the Open USD stablecoin on Solana last month. Miebach said the company was keen to create a stablecoin focused particularly on moving money rather than on investment purposes.

Moomoo, the trading platform owned by Nasdaq-listed Futu Holdings, is rolling out real-time account deposits through Apple Pay and Google Pay in partnership with Visa and Checkout.com. The service lets users deposit money 24 hours a day, seven days a week using an eligible debit card linked to their digital wallet, rather than relying on bank transfers limited to business hours. Funds can be used to invest in stocks, cryptocurrencies, ETFs, options and event contracts, though access is subject to funding availability and depends on region and compliance processes. The service runs on Visa's payments network and Checkout.com's payment infrastructure. Neil McDonald, chief executive of Moomoo U.S., said expanding funding capabilities through Visa and Checkout.com makes it easier for users to quickly move money into their Moomoo accounts when they are ready to invest. The move comes as retail brokers compete to keep customers active beyond regular market hours, and follows Moomoo's addition of Web3 wallet integration, agentic investing tools through its Moomoo API Skills and prediction markets through a partnership with Kalshi; the company says it serves more than 30 million investors worldwide.

The architecture for institutional stablecoins effectively locked into place between October 6 and October 8, 2026, as five distinct infrastructure layers shipped simultaneously to satisfy the requirements of the GENIUS Act. The reserve layer is now a functional duopoly of the JPMorgan JLTXX fund, holding $733.7 million in assets under management, and the BlackRock BSTBL parent fund, backed by a $6.1 billion parent fund, because the GENIUS Act's 40% concentration limit on any single tokenized reserve asset forces issuers to use both. Above the reserves, SAP Pay has been embedded into SAP Cloud ERP, supporting USDC and EURC across 89 corridors and reaching approximately 400,000 customers. The credit layer gained the first-ever stablecoin protocol rating from Moody's, which assigned a B3 rating to the Sky Protocol alongside an S&P B- rating, defining a 0.9% capital ratio and upgrade and downgrade thresholds. On the merchant side, Citi connected its $6 trillion payment network to Coinbase stablecoin rails, covering 150 million cardholders with a 3.75% platform incentive. These layers feed four settlement rails: SoFi and Mastercard, Visa's $20 billion annualized volume, Stripe's expansion across more than 100 countries, and Solana's delivery-versus-payment capabilities. The urgency stems from the January 18, 2027, effective date of the GENIUS Act, with seven federal agencies having failed to meet their July 2026 rulemaking obligations, while a survey by the American Bankers Association and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors found 18% of community banks plan to launch tokenized deposits within 12 months and 60% expect to lose ground to the new stablecoin rails.

Crossmint has launched Agent Commerce Toolkit, a live, self-serve developer toolkit that lets AI agents pay with any card and complete purchases at any online store through a single integration. The toolkit replaces the four or more vendors agent payments typically require today, combining card storage, Visa Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard Agent Pay credentials, and merchant checkout into one API. Card entry renders in the developer's own UI and goes directly to a PCI-compliant vault, so developers' servers receive only a token and never touch card numbers, keeping them out of PCI scope. Where a card supports it, the toolkit uses tokenized credentials from Visa Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard Agent Pay, and when a card is not eligible it still completes the purchase securely from the vault. For each purchase, the toolkit chooses a checkout path based on availability, reliability and cost using embedded options like Shop Pay, agentic commerce protocols like Universal Commerce Protocol, or browser automation where neither exists. Developers can integrate it in a single prompt by pointing an AI coding tool such as Claude Code or Cursor at the Crossmint docs, and an open-source reference app on GitHub demonstrates the full flow with live purchases.

The protocol stack for autonomous agent-to-merchant commerce is now effectively complete, but merchant adoption remains fractured and consumer trust lags far behind the infrastructure. Four layers now underpin machine-led spending: the Stripe Machine Payments Protocol, launched in March 2026, provides a programmable policy layer for stablecoin, fiat, and BNPL transactions; the Google Universal Commerce Protocol set an open standard for agentic commerce in January 2026; and by June 2026 Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines with more than 30 launch partners including Adyen, Coinbase, and Stripe. Capital flows have surged alongside these rails, with Visa stablecoin settlement reaching an annualized $20 billion by September 2026, a 15x increase year-over-year, while Stripe stablecoin card volume hit $1.2 billion in the same month. Merchants, however, have split into three incompatible postures: QVC has integrated agents into its supply chain and catalog distribution, sending catalogs to OpenAI and Google; Kate Spade lets agents browse inventory but blocks them at the point of purchase, citing fraud and inventory management risks; and Amazon and eBay have moved to block AI agents entirely, even as Shopify makes Muse the default agent interface for consumers. The core barrier is trust rather than technology, with an NMI survey finding that only 3% of US adults trust AI agents to complete purchases on their behalf, and the VML Tomorrow's Commerce 2026 report showing one-third of active AI users refuse to authorize agents to spend their money. The bottleneck has thus shifted from the protocol layer to the trust layer, leaving a high-capacity system operating at a fraction of its potential throughput.

Institutional stablecoin settlement moved onto four live production rails within a single month, with stablecoin-linked card spending reaching $1.2 billion in September 2026, roughly triple the year-earlier figure, according to PaymentScan data cited by CoinDesk. SoFi and Mastercard went live on September 22 with SoFiUSD, the first stablecoin issued by a U.S. nationally chartered bank deployed for live card-settlement production, with $25 billion in annualized card volume migrating to blockchain-based settlement on Mastercard's global payments network. Visa is already operating at a $20 billion annualized run rate for stablecoin settlement as of September 8, a 15x increase from $1.3 billion a year earlier and up from $7 billion in April, while Stripe announced October 1 that it is expanding its stablecoin card programs to more than 100 countries by year-end, up from 18. The Solana DvP standard, launched October 5-6 with JPMorgan advisory input, cuts settlement finality from T+2 days to roughly 400 milliseconds and cost from $50-500 to less than one cent, though it launched with no production settlement volumes yet. Separately, the DTCC's tokenization service, supported by a working group of over 50 firms including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and State Street, is planned for October launch, and OKX closed a funding extension at a $25 billion pre-money valuation with backing from Circle, Ripple, Standard Chartered's SC Ventures, and Qube Research.

OpenTable and Visa announced a renewed multi-year agreement covering the U.S., Mexico and Canada that extends the Visa Dining Collection in Mexico and Canada and expands their exclusive dining events program across North America. The Visa Dining Collection will continue in Canada and Mexico, giving eligible Visa cardholders exclusive access to sought-after reservations in Mexico City, Monterrey, Los Cabos and Cancun, as well as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and surrounding areas. Returning restaurants include Mon Lapin and Rôtisserie La Lune in Montreal, LOREA and Pargot in Mexico City and KOLI in Monterrey, with new additions coming soon, and eligible Visa Infinite cardholders worldwide traveling to Mexico or Canada will be able to book held tables and events at participating restaurants. In the U.S., the companies are expanding their events program through 2029, following a two-year calendar of over 80 bespoke events, the majority of which sold out, including Friends in Town and Off the Clock. OpenTable Chief Growth Officer Robin Chiang said the collaboration has helped restaurants fill millions of seats, and the companies cited a survey finding that 48% of Americans this year said they are more likely to dine at a restaurant hosting a pop-up, collaboration or special experience. North America events will be announced at a later date via opentable.com/visa-dining-program/events.

Visa is expanding its stablecoin infrastructure across nine blockchains and now supports more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs, with payment volume up nearly 200% year over year. In fiscal 2026 year to date, about 17% of Visa's stablecoin-linked card volume came from business and commercial card programs, and its stablecoin settlement volume has crossed a $20 billion annualized run rate, up more than 15-fold from a year ago. The company launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform, introduced an onchain credit model in September 2026 that uses VisaNet settlement data, and expects its partnership with Bridge to take stablecoin-linked cards to more than 100 countries. Visa's Value-Added Services revenues rose to $3.8 billion in the third quarter of fiscal 2026 from $2.8 billion a year earlier, while processed transactions rose 10% year over year to 71.7 billion. Net cash provided by operating activities totaled $16.3 billion in the first nine months of fiscal 2026, free cash flow reached $15.2 billion, and Visa returned $6.2 billion in the third quarter through dividends and share repurchases, including $4.9 billion of buybacks, with $28.4 billion still available under its repurchase authorization as of June 30, 2026.

The OUSD stablecoin has officially gone live with Visa, Mastercard and Stripe behind it, according to Scott Melker on "The Daily Wolf with Scott Melker." OUSD, or Open USD, is a consortium of fintechs and payment companies launching their own stablecoin to compete in a massive market where high interest rates generate essentially free money, and it is being run by Stripe, which acquired Bridge in a unicorn deal and whose Bridge CEO is also running the blockchain. The stablecoin is launching on multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, with the bulk of liquidity expected on Stripe's own Tempo blockchain, while reserves will be held at BlackRock, BNY and Lead Bank. Five founding members — Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa — will split the equity and have invested a billion dollars for initial liquidity, and depending on usage they will accrue more or less equity or earnings from the stablecoin, meaning earnings accrue to the companies promoting and using it rather than to a private company behind it. The launch follows a huge debate when it was announced, as 140 logos appeared including BlackRock and others, and some companies said they had never heard of it and had not gotten the memo.

Visa has expanded its relationship with AptPay through a direct integration with Visa Direct for real-time payouts. The tie-up includes the rollout of Visa Direct Alias, which lets recipients receive funds using identifiers other than traditional bank details. AptPay plans to use the Visa Direct connection to support instant disbursements in the U.S. iGaming and digital-first payout market. Visa operates a global payment network connecting card issuers, merchants and consumers, and carries a market value of about $675.0 billion. The next practical checkpoint is how management breaks out Visa Direct and related payout volumes in upcoming results, particularly transaction growth tied to use cases such as iGaming and digital-first disbursements that rely on Alias and similar capabilities.

Apple's payment service Apple Pay has launched in India, local partner Axis Bank announced on the 30th. India had been one of the few major countries where Apple Pay was unavailable. Axis is the first Indian bank to offer Apple Pay, initially for holders of Visa and Mastercard credit cards. According to the bank's statement, users can register an eligible card in the bank's mobile app or in Apple Wallet and then pay in stores, within apps, and online using an iPhone, Apple Watch, or iPad. Axis is India's third-largest private bank, and according to central bank data its credit card issuance stood at 16.3 million cards as of August, ranking fourth in the country. Reuters reported in September that Apple Pay was also in talks with HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank, both larger than Axis, but had not yet agreed on terms.

Visa is extending the reach of Visa Direct into the U.S. iGaming payments market through a planned direct integration with AptPay. The addition of Visa Direct Alias, currently being piloted in the United States, could make payouts easier by letting users receive funds through identifiers such as phone numbers, email addresses or supported wallet handles. AptPay's single integration also helps gaming companies manage payment methods, routing, reconciliation and connectivity without building separate links to every network. The growth of regulated online gaming provides a sizable addressable market, with U.S. iGaming revenues reaching $10.74 billion in 2025, up 27.6% year over year, while sports-betting revenues increased 22.8% to $16.96 billion in 2025. The announcement does not provide revenue, fee, volume or earnings guidance for Visa or AptPay, though broader Visa Direct adoption could support incremental payment volumes and transaction-related revenues as iGaming expands.

U.S. Bank has launched two new small business credit cards, the U.S. Bank Business Essentials Visa Card and the U.S. Bank Business Essentials Plus Visa Signature Card, and named actress and entrepreneur Jessica Alba as its new small business card spokesperson. Both cards offer unlimited 2% cash back on eligible purchases, with total cash back rising to up to 2.5% on Business Essentials and up to 3.5% on Business Essentials Plus when cardholders pair qualifying balances in a qualified business checking account. The Business Essentials Plus card also automatically earns 5% cash back on the top spend category, up to $200,000 annually, and carries a $295 annual fee, while Business Essentials has no annual fee. New Business Essentials cardholders can earn $500 after spending $5,000 in the first 150 days of account opening plus 0% intro APR on purchases for the first 12 billing cycles, and Business Essentials Plus cardholders can earn $1,000 after spending $15,000 in the first 150 days. Courtney Kelso, senior executive vice president of Payments, Consumer and Small Business, said small business owners employ over 61 million Americans and contribute to nearly half of the nation's GDP, and that the cards reward the strength of small businesses that build deeper connections with U.S. Bank. Alba will appear in digital and television ads for the two cards.

Visa Inc. disclosed in a September 23 regulatory filing that it authorized a $405 million deposit into its U.S. litigation escrow account on September 18, 2026. The escrow, established under the company's U.S. retrospective responsibility plan, shifts legacy U.S. litigation liabilities to Class B shareholders, primarily U.S. financial institutions, and funding it lowers the conversion rates of Class B-1, B-2, and B-3 shares into Class A stock. Class B-1 fell from 1.5445 to 1.5400, Class B-2 dropped from 1.5014 to 1.4924, and Class B-3 decreased from 1.4953 to 1.4773, trimming the combined as-converted Class B share count by roughly 1.104 million shares. Visa said the adjustment contracts its overall fully diluted Class A share count and carries the same earnings per share accretive impact as repurchasing Class A shares in the open market. The deposit comes as Visa reported $11.6 billion in net revenue, up 14% year-over-year, and $5.6 billion in GAAP net income for Q3 fiscal 2026, while also recording a $237 million litigation provision and $563 million in severance charges.

Visa has partnered with UPT to deploy Currencycloud for corporate cross-border payments and virtual IBAN accounts. The collaboration gives corporate clients access to virtual EUR and GBP IBANs for simplified international collections, and UPT plans to use Currencycloud's platform to streamline cross-border payment flows for business customers across multiple markets. The move fits into a broader shift in Visa's business payments strategy, leaning into its value-added services and cross-border flows alongside Visa Direct to make the network more useful for corporate money movement. Visa operates a global payment network connecting consumers, merchants, financial institutions and governments, with a reported market value of about $674.4b. The key question left open is how far Visa can extend pricing power as more real-time account-to-account systems and alternative rails grow, with the next clear signal being how Visa reports Visa Direct and broader cross-border volumes in its upcoming fiscal 2027 results.

DingoBlu Financial, Inc. announced a strategic partnership with MVB Bank, Inc. under which MVB will provide the regulated banking infrastructure supporting eligible DingoBlu deposit products and related banking services, while DingoBlu supplies the technology platform and digital experience for clients to access and manage their accounts. DingoBlu, a Visa fintech partner, will run its debit card program on the Visa network through MVB Bank. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based fintech is developing a mobile-first platform with planned offerings including checking and savings account options, digital account-management tools and Visa debit card access, with specific product features, rates, fees, terms and availability to be shared closer to launch. DingoBlu Chief Executive Officer Thomas Ulry said partnering with MVB brings the company one step closer to introducing the DingoBlu experience, while MVB Financial Corp. President and CEO Larry F. Mazza said MVB's banking expertise and regulatory capabilities provide a strong foundation for DingoBlu's growth. MVB Financial Corp. trades on Nasdaq under the ticker MVBF.

Visa teamed up with Mastercard and Ant International to build common standards for verifying AI purchasing agents, sending its shares up roughly 1.3% to $366.229 at 10.49am ET on Thursday morning. The company's Trusted Agent Protocol gives approved AI agents signed credentials that merchants can recognize, drawing a line between legitimate shopping assistants and hostile bots without forcing retailers or payment companies to rebuild the financial plumbing beneath every transaction. Visa's opportunity is to keep control of the valuable layers of authorization, tokenization and fraud protection even when software makes the buying decision. The stock remains 9.38% below its GF Value estimate of $404.14, leaving a visible valuation gap despite the day's advance. The standards strengthen Visa's position, but the payoff depends on AI agents generating new payment volume instead of merely replacing transactions consumers already make.

Visa Inc. has signed a memorandum of understanding with Klook to strengthen its presence in Southeast Asia's experience-led travel market across six markets: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Under the agreement, the two companies will pursue joint creator programs, cardholder offers and in-destination brand presence, and Klook will join Visa Destinations, giving Visa cardholders access to travel experiences and related offers across the region. The partnership could expand Visa's role in travel beyond payments by connecting cardholders with trip inspiration, experiences and offers through Klook. Visa's 2026 Global Travel Intentions study found that 37% of Asia Pacific respondents plan trips around unique local experiences, compared with 29% globally, while Klook's Travel Pulse 2026 found that more than half of Asia Pacific travelers no longer start planning with a fixed destination and 23% begin with a specific activity. In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, Visa's cross-border volume excluding intra-Europe increased 12% year over year on a constant-dollar basis, while travel-related cross-border volume climbed 10%, and Klook's Kreator Program, with more than 30,000 creators across 88 markets, gives Visa another channel to engage travelers before and during their trips.

Cleverbridge announced it completed France's first Passkey-authenticated agentic payment in a live checkout, in a pilot with Visa and Revolut announced earlier this month. Visa's test agent, My Agent, initiated the purchase, and Cleverbridge recognized it as an approved agent through Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol and completed the checkout. A Visa Payment Passkey authenticated the transaction, supporting Strong Customer Authentication requirements in Europe, and Revolut authorized the payment on a French consumer retail card. The transaction was powered by Visa Intelligent Commerce, running on Visa's existing payment infrastructure. In July, Cleverbridge announced it was among the first merchants to enable Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol and Agentic Directory, and had begun completing agent-initiated transactions in its own environment; this transaction takes that work into market with a live consumer card issued by Revolut. Cleverbridge, founded in 2005, processes more than $1 billion in volume annually across 240+ markets.

Vietnam Airlines exchanged signed Memoranda of Understanding with Visa and Amazon Web Services to strengthen cooperation in payments, travel, technology and data, during the visit to the United States by General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam's Central Committee and President To Lam, accompanied by a high-level Vietnamese delegation. Under the agreement with Visa, Vietnam Airlines will explore evolving its Lotusmiles frequent-flyer program into a broader loyalty platform spanning travel, lifestyle and an expanded partner ecosystem, including co-branded cards for domestic and international markets and digital payment solutions across commercial activities, agency networks and supply-chain operations. The AWS agreement covers artificial intelligence, digital transformation and inflight connectivity, with a key focus on AI and generative AI applications across passenger services, commercial activities, flight operations, aircraft maintenance, corporate management and data analytics, alongside cloud computing, enterprise data platforms, IT modernisation and cybersecurity. Le Truong Giang, Member of the Board of Directors of Vietnam Airlines, said the partnerships bring together expertise in payments, technology and data, enabling more connected and personalized services while strengthening operational capabilities. Dang Tuyet Dung, Visa Country Manager for Vietnam and Laos, and Tedd Evers, Global Partner Leader, Travel and Hospitality, also commented on the collaboration, which supports Vietnam Airlines' ambition to become a 5-star carrier.

Visa has partnered with Reap to bring stablecoin-linked credit card programs to more than 100 markets, letting businesses fund card spending with stablecoins while merchants continue to accept Visa payments. Reap will handle card processing, compliance and day-to-day operations, and already settles its Asia-Pacific obligations with Visa directly in stablecoins. The two companies also plan to explore payments made by AI agents within limits set by users, though that work remains an exploration rather than a launched product. Visa shares edged up about 0.3% to $362.95 Wednesday morning on the news. The announcement offers no forecast for card spending or additional Visa revenue, leaving the test as whether the programs bring meaningful payment volume onto Visa's network.

A Visa study found that 56% of Americans would use stablecoins for international transfers if they came with bank-level fraud protection and deposit insurance, up from 36% without such safeguards. The finding comes from Visa's Money Travels 2026 report, released Wednesday, which also found that 56% of U.S. respondents had never heard of stablecoins and that many who had wrongly assumed they fluctuate like Bitcoin. Willingness rose to 45% when stablecoins were offered through an existing financial provider, and about six in 10 Americans said they would trust a traditional bank, at 61%, or a global payment network, at 60%, with digital currency services. Outside the United States the trend held as well, with willingness in Latin America more than doubling from 34% to 74% when protections were in place. Morning Consult ran the survey from Feb. 24 to March 2, polling 45,445 people across 20 markets, including 2,192 U.S. adults. Visa also said 36% of U.S. remitters reported encountering a cross-border payment scam and 44% worry about AI deepfakes impersonating family members. Visa's stablecoin settlement volume has reached an annualized rate above $20 billion, up from a $3.5 billion run rate when it began U.S. settlement in USDC on Solana last December, and Visa Direct added stablecoin payouts through Zerohash in August. BlackRock put stablecoins' market cap above $300 billion this month, with more than $11 trillion in adjusted transaction volume last year.

Moov Financial, Inc. announced Moov Money, a real-time person-to-person payment solution built in collaboration with Visa and Mastercard that lets consumers send and receive money using only an eligible debit card and a trusted mobile phone connection. Unlike other P2P services that require both parties to use the same app, Moov Money uses the debit card as the payment destination, reaching the 90.5% of U.S. consumers who carry a debit card according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's 2025 Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice. The platform runs on Mastercard Move and Visa Direct, with Moov supplying identity verification, fraud controls and dispute management, and it is available today to banks, credit unions, neobanks and brokerages for domestic person-to-person payments. Jack Henry's Banno Digital Platform is the first to integrate Moov Money, giving more than 1,000 banks and credit unions turnkey access, with others soon to follow. Moov CEO Wade Arnold said moving money shouldn't depend on whether two people use the same app, while Visa Direct North America head Justin Zhao and Mastercard North America EVP Mike Kresse both framed the launch as a step toward interoperable, secure money movement.

Visa has joined the founding validator cohort for Circle's Arc L1 blockchain, moving the payments giant from routing stablecoin traffic to helping secure the network itself. The cohort includes BlackRock, DTCC, Mastercard, and ICE. Visa's stablecoin settlement volume rose from a $3.5 billion annualized run rate in November 2025 to $7 billion by April 2026 and to an annualized $20 billion by September, a 15x year-over-year increase. Visa runs a dual-chain strategy: Solana remains the primary venue for production settlement with partners Cross River Bank and Lead Bank on a seven-day cycle, while Arc L1, which launched its mainnet on September 16, 2026, is a permissioned, USDC-native environment built for financial markets and agentic AI economic activity. Rubail Birwadker, Visa's Global Head of Growth Products and Strategic Partnerships, said Arc represents the compliant, high-trust network infrastructure needed to support onchain payments growth, and Circle Chief Product and Technology Officer Nikhil Chandhok said the work reflects growing demand for USDC and settlement infrastructure. The build-out comes ahead of the GENIUS Act enforcement cliff on January 18, 2027, after federal agencies missed the July 2026 rulemaking deadline, and as Visa expands to over 160 card programs in more than 50 countries.

UPT announced a collaboration with Visa to implement Currencycloud, a Visa Direct offering, enabling its corporate customers to access virtual EUR and GBP IBANs in their own company name and manage international collections through a single platform. The Turkish money transfer and payment platform, a subsidiary of Aktif Bank, will initially offer the Virtual IBAN service for EUR and GBP, with USD planned to be added at a later stage. Beyond Virtual IBANs, Currencycloud will also enable UPT to enhance its cross-border payments offering through real-time foreign exchange capabilities. UPT CEO Murat Kastan said the collaboration will let UPTION Corporate users obtain a Virtual IBAN in their own companies' names and manage international collection and payment processes through a single platform with competitive foreign exchange rates. Jak Telyaz, VP of Business Development at Visa Europe, said Visa is proud to support UPT in bringing multi-currency account capabilities to its corporate customers.

Kasikornbank, or KBANK, has launched the limited-edition official KBANK VISA & BTS WORLD TOUR 'ARIRANG' debit card in collaboration with Visa and BTS, welcoming the return of the global boy band. The card comes with a K PLUS theme featuring an e-Slip, postcards of all seven artists, and a full set of stickers bearing the concert's logo and symbols. Applicants receive one immediate chance to win a ticket to the BTS WORLD TOUR 'ARIRANG' IN BANGKOK concert when they apply for the card, plus one additional chance for every 3,000 baht in accumulated spending, up to a maximum of 10 chances per person. The campaign runs from September 22, 2026 to October 31, 2026. Cardholders also earn 1 K Point for every 25 baht spent, receive up to 3% cash back on selected goods and services, enjoy good exchange rates on overseas spending in any currency with no 2.5% foreign transaction fee, and get one annual visit to the Miracle Lounge or Coral Lounge airport lounge. Customers interested in applying for the card can do so themselves through K PLUS or at any Kasikornbank branch from September 22, 2026 to June 30, 2027.

Visa eliminated roughly 2,600 roles, about 7% of its workforce, and logged $563 million in severance costs as it redirects savings into AI tooling, product velocity, and the newly announced BioCatch identity-security acquisition. The restructuring landed in a fiscal third quarter that otherwise showed 14% net revenue growth to $11.6 billion, with payments volume crossing $4 trillion for the first time and value-added services up 34% in constant dollars to $3.8 billion, now about 30% of total net revenue. Operating margin for the quarter came in at 66.13%, slightly below the 66.77% posted a year earlier, the first year-over-year margin dip in the eight-quarter window, as operating expenses grew 17% on marketing and personnel costs including the severance charge and a larger-than-expected FX impact from balance sheet remeasurement. Free cash flow swung from $6.40 billion, a 58.73% margin, in the December 2025 quarter to $2.63 billion, a 23.37% margin, in the March 2026 quarter before recovering to $6.14 billion, a 52.76% margin, in the June 2026 quarter, a dip that landed while Visa was funding $4.9 billion in quarterly buybacks, a $250 million litigation escrow contribution, dividends, the $2.4 billion BioCatch acquisition, and a newly announced €500 million European infrastructure commitment. Chief Executive Ryan McInerney and Chief Financial Officer Chris Suh guided full-year EPS growth to the low end of mid-teens, and Visa's next-twelve-months EV/EBITDA multiple sits at 19.62x, below its two-year mean of 20.28x and well off its 24.23x high.

Visa is moving to close a loophole that let meme coin purchases made with its credit cards earn ordinary credit card rewards. According to a source familiar with the matter, the workaround allowed meme coin purchases processed through the crypto payments infrastructure firm Crossmint to be coded as "digital goods media," a category typically used for e-books, movies and music, rather than as crypto transactions. The move follows a Block investigation finding that users of the Robinhood Wallet and Fomo apps could buy meme coins with credit cards through Apple Pay or Google Pay without completing a separate KYC process, with test purchases powered by Crossmint and made with both Visa and Mastercard cards coded as digital goods media. Chase told The Block that one Visa transaction had not been flagged as a cryptocurrency purchase, had been assigned the wrong merchant category code and should not have earned rewards, and the bank opened a case with Visa challenging the classification, while the New York attorney general's office said it was aware of and reviewing the matter. In correspondence reviewed by Crypto In America, Visa told at least one industry participant that the digital goods media merchant code is not appropriate for meme coin purchases, and has informed payment processors including Checkout.com that the code will no longer be accepted for those transactions, with a grace period expected to end next week. Going forward, the purchases must be processed as crypto transactions and will be subject to Visa's corresponding rules and restrictions.

Mastercard rolled out a payment option Thursday that lets cardholders give an AI agent a virtual card to buy things online without checking in before each purchase, with limits on spending, retailers, or required approval before checkout. Rival Visa partnered with Alchemy earlier this year and has announced its own AI shopping and payment product, Visa Intelligent Commerce, which the company says is still being deployed, while Meta's Muse can search for products and navigate checkout but presents the purchase for the user's final approval. Phil Bruno, chief strategy and growth officer at payments company ACI Worldwide, called it "a land grab for infrastructure standards," saying that if card companies set the standards for agentic commerce they can keep the commerce in their environments for decades to come. Consumer appetite lags the infrastructure push: just 7% of U.S. and U.K. consumers surveyed who buy fashion items said they would allow an AI assistant to make purchases without approval under predefined conditions, according to research commissioned by ACI Worldwide, and more than half said they were uncomfortable allowing AI to purchase on their behalf. Mastercard has developed a digital paper trail called Verifiable Intent to record who authorized the agent to shop and what it was authorized to buy, but when asked who would be responsible if an agent made an incorrect, fraudulent, or unauthorized purchase, Mastercard pointed back to Verifiable Intent and did not specify who would ultimately be responsible if an agent bought something outside those instructions.