Visa Stock (V): Payments Volume, the 30-Cent Take and the DOJ Case

Michael Whitman · Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020 · YouTube creator, 137K subscribers · Published 2026-11-07

Visa stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker V. Visa does not lend money or issue cards. Banks do that; Visa runs the network that carries the payment between the shopper’s bank and the merchant’s bank, and charges both sides small fees for it. Its 10-K puts it plainly: Visa “does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees” for cardholders. The result is a business that kept 61.2 cents of operating income from each dollar of fiscal 2026 net revenue.

Quote pages give a P/E in the mid-30s and three different market values. We used Visa’s 10-Ks to answer the questions they skip: how much it keeps per $100 spent, how much it pays back to the banks, what the Justice Department case is about, and how the stock reacts to results.

V at a glance: Visa against Mastercard in 2026

Visa’s fiscal year ends on September 30. Its 10-K for fiscal 2026 was filed on November 5, 2026, so the earnings here are a full, audited year, set against the share price at the November 6, 2026 close.

The stock rose 20.51% in 2026 to November 6, against 14.33% for Mastercard and 7.76% for the S&P 500. It set a record close of $436.57 on November 4, 2026; its low of the past year was $295.52 on March 27, 2026.

Why the market value differs from site to site. Visa has class A shares, which trade, plus class B-1, B-2, B-3 and C shares and preferred stock that convert into class A at set rates. On the 10-K cover there were 1,724,473,215 class A shares at October 29, 2026. Counted with the others at their conversion rates, the 10-K gives 1,867 million as-converted shares at September 30. At the same November 6 close, Yahoo showed $788.58 billion and StockAnalysis $797.25 billion (both read November 7), which points to slightly different share counts. The P/E is the steadier figure because Visa reports EPS per class A share directly.

How it works: Visa’s four fees, minus client incentives

Visa books four kinds of fees and then subtracts what it pays back to banks, merchants and partners to win and keep their volume. The fiscal 2026 lines, from the 10-K:

The US supplied $17.42 billion of net revenue, 38.0%. In the 12 months to June 30, 2026, Visa-branded cards carried $15.34 trillion of payments volume: 47.5% consumer debit, 39.8% consumer credit and the rest commercial. The 10-K’s network comparison for calendar 2025, with the other networks’ figures taken from The Nilson Report, puts Visa’s payments volume at $14.57 trillion against $8.81 trillion for Mastercard, 1.65 times as much.

The original data: Visa’s net revenue per $100 of payments volume

Net revenue per $100 of payments volume, fiscal 2017-2026. Visa bills its service fees on the previous quarter’s volume, so each fiscal year’s revenue lines up with payments volume for the 12 months to June 30. We took that volume from ten 10-Ks, using the latest filing that reports each year, and divided fiscal-year net revenue by it. This is our own ratio, not a Visa figure, and it covers all net revenue, not only the fees charged on volume.

• Fiscal 2017: $7.20 trillion of payments volume and $18.36 billion of net revenue, 25.5 cents per $100. That is the first full year with Visa Europe, bought in June 2016.
• Fiscal 2020 and 2021: volume grew 1.1% in fiscal 2020 while net revenue fell 4.9%. The fiscal 2020 10-K tied the fall to COVID-19, with cross-border volume outside Europe down 23%. The ratio bottomed at 24.2 cents in fiscal 2021.
• Fiscal 2022 to 2025: 25.6, 27.0, 27.7 and 28.8 cents, on volume of $11.47 trillion, $12.09 trillion, $12.99 trillion and $13.90 trillion. Fiscal 2018 and 2019 were 25.3 and 26.7 cents on $8.14 trillion and $8.62 trillion; fiscal 2020 was 25.1 cents on $8.72 trillion and fiscal 2021 24.2 cents on $9.97 trillion.
• Fiscal 2026: $15.34 trillion and $45.90 billion, 29.9 cents, the highest in the series.
• Over the nine years volume grew 8.8% a year and net revenue 10.7%. The gap comes from fees that do not track volume one for one, such as processing, cross-border and the value-added services that the 10-K puts at $14.2 billion of fiscal 2026 revenue.

Client incentives as a share of gross revenue, fiscal 2019-2026. Incentives are the payments Visa makes to issuers, merchants and partners under long-term contracts. They are deducted before net revenue.

• Fiscal 2019: $6.17 billion of incentives, 21.2% of $29.15 billion of gross revenue.
• Fiscal 2022: $10.29 billion, 26.0%.
• Fiscal 2026: $18.32 billion, 28.5% of $64.22 billion.

The share rose in every year shown: 23.4% in fiscal 2020 ($6.66 billion), 25.8% in 2021 ($8.37 billion), then 27.4%, 27.7% and 28.2% from fiscal 2023 to 2025 ($12.30 billion, $13.76 billion and $15.75 billion). Visa’s 10-K warns that “continued pressures on pricing, incentives, fee discounts and rebates could moderate our growth”, and incentives are the main thing standing between the growth in fees and the growth in net revenue.

Download the data: payments volume and net revenue, revenue lines and incentives and earnings-day moves. Reuse is free with a credit to whitmantrading.com, as set out in our site license.

A worked example: rebuilding V’s numbers from the fiscal 2026 10-K

1. Earnings per share. The fiscal 2026 10-K reports diluted class A EPS of $12.32, against $10.20 a year earlier, up 20.8%.
2. P/E. $422.65 ÷ $12.32 = 34.3. A year earlier, at the November 6, 2025 close of $336.96, the P/E on fiscal 2025 EPS was 33.0. Our P/E ratio page explains the measure.
3. As-converted shares. At September 30, 2026: 1,728 million class A, 90 million from class B-3 (61 million shares at 1.4773), 36 million from class C (9 million at 4.0), 4 million from classes B-1 and B-2 and 9 million from preferred stock, for 1,867 million.
4. Market value. $422.65 × 1,867 million = $789.1 billion. See our market cap page for why share counts matter.
5. Price-to-sales and book. $789.1 billion ÷ $45.90 billion = 17.19; ÷ $36.11 billion of equity = 21.9. Book value is low because Visa returns most of its profit, which our price-to-book page explains.
6. Yield. The board raised the quarterly dividend 16.4% to $0.780 on October 27, 2026, payable December 1. $0.780 × 4 = $3.12 a year, and $3.12 ÷ $422.65 = 0.74%.

Where Visa’s profit goes: 108.8% handed back in fiscal 2026

Where the profit goes. In fiscal 2026 Visa bought back about 61 million class A shares for $20.45 billion, at an average of $335.49, and paid $5.11 billion of dividends: together 108.8% of its $23.50 billion of net income. Buybacks from fiscal 2017 to 2026 add up to $118.7 billion, and the diluted as-converted share count fell 20.4% over that time, from 2,395 million to 1,907 million. Our stock buybacks page covers what that does to EPS.

The Justice Department debit case

On September 24, 2024 the US Department of Justice sued Visa in federal court in New York under the Sherman Act. The 10-K’s summary is that the complaint alleges Visa has monopolized and attempted to monopolize debit network services in the United States, both in general and for online, card-not-present payments, through agreements with merchants, acquirers and others. It asks the court to stop those practices. On June 23, 2025 the court denied Visa’s motion to dismiss. As of the 10-K filed November 5, 2026, the case had not been decided.

• The day it was filed Visa fell 5.49% to $272.78. Mastercard fell 1.96%, and the S&P 500 rose 0.25%.
• Since then, to November 6, 2026, Visa has risen 54.9%, against 33.9% for Mastercard and 28.7% for the S&P 500.
• On the day the motion was denied the shares rose 1.53% from the previous close.

A shareholder class action filed on November 20, 2024 over the same practices was dismissed without leave to amend on June 29, 2026, according to the 10-K. Visa’s fiscal 2026 income statement carries a $1.76 billion litigation provision, which covers many cases, not only these.

Earnings days: Visa’s quieter results since 2021

Visa reports after the 4 p.m. close, so we measured from the release-day close to the next close. Three releases came before the open (January 30, 2014; November 2, 2015; October 25, 2017), and for those we measured the release day itself.

• 75 quarterly releases since April 28, 2008: median move 2.34%, against 0.82% across 4,587 other sessions, about 2.9 times as large.
• 12 moved 5% or more and 2 moved 10% or more. The largest were +10.60% on January 28, 2022 and −6.92% on October 27, 2021.
• 39 rose and 35 fell, one was flat; against a 53.6% up-rate on other days that is well within chance (binomial p = 0.82).
• They have got quieter. The 24 releases since 2021 had a median move of 1.61%. The latest, released after the close on October 27, 2026, was followed by a −0.31% move the next day.

When it fails: deep falls, Mastercard and the courts

Size did not stop deep falls. From a close of $22.13 on May 7, 2008 to $10.61 on January 20, 2009, split-adjusted, the stock fell 52.1%. In 2020 it fell 36.4% in five weeks, from February 19 to March 23. From July 27, 2021 to September 30, 2022 it fell 29.2% and took until November 21, 2023 to recover. Most recently it fell 20.8% from June 11, 2025 to March 27, 2026. Each episode is measured close to close, as set out on our drawdown page.

It moves with Mastercard. Since 2016 the daily returns of the two have had a correlation of 0.90. Visa beat the S&P 500 in 6 of the 10 years from 2016 to 2025 but beat Mastercard in only 2; it lagged the index in 2021 (−0.9% against 26.9%) and 2025 (11.0% against 16.4%).

Rules and courts set its prices. Interchange rules, debit routing laws and lawsuits from merchants all bear on what Visa can charge, and the 10-K names each as a risk. Every number on this page is a dated snapshot and will move with the next quarter.

Questions people ask

What is Visa’s market cap?

About $789 billion at the November 6, 2026 close, on 1,867 million as-converted class A shares. Counting only the 1,724,473,215 traded class A shares gives about $729 billion.

Does Visa pay a dividend?

Yes. It declared $0.780 a share for December 1, 2026, up from $0.67, which is a 0.74% yield at $422.65. Our dividend yield page covers the arithmetic.

Has Visa split its stock?

Once, 4-for-1, effective March 19, 2015. Its first close as a listed company, on March 19, 2008, was $56.50, or $14.13 after the split.

How does Visa compare with Mastercard?

Bigger by volume, and close in price behavior. From Visa’s first close on March 19, 2008 to November 6, 2026, its share price rose 2,892% and Mastercard’s 3,032%, against 468% for the S&P 500, dividends left out.

Is Visa a bank?

No. Its 10-K says Visa “is not a financial institution”. The bank that issued the card extends the credit and carries that risk; Visa says it does not “bear credit risk” on those activities.

Related

The measures on this page are explained in earnings per share, free cash flow and beta. For card costs from the borrower’s side, see credit card interest. If you own Visa through a financials fund, sector funds shows how that concentration works.

This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.