Visa extended partnerships and made new connections during its fiscal first quarter as it looked to expand its reach, develop new use cases for its offerings and push its peer-to-peer payments capabilities. 

“We remain obsessed about serving our customers, including traditional bank partners, neobanks, fintechs, wallets, sellers, acquirers and everyone else,” Chief Executive Ryan McInerney said during the card giant’s first-quarter earnings call on Jan. 25. “Our focus on clients has enabled us to deepen our relationships with partners.”

One way Visa has done this is by expanding its Visa Direct partnership with Meta during Q1, McInerney said, noting that this offers “the ability for content creators on Meta’s family of apps to cash out their earnings to a debit card.” 

The Visa-Meta launch is now live in the United States, United Kingdom, France and Italy, he said. 

BIGGER PICTURE: Visa also made the following deals and renewals in Q1 of FY2024: 

• Acquisition of a majority interest in Mexico-based payments processor Prosa; 
• Agreement extension with Bank of America for the Visa loyalty program service, CardinalCommerce 3D secure service, Verifi Order Insight digital service and DPS (debit processing service); 
• Renewed with San Francisco-based fintech Chime; and 
• Renewed with Latin America-based fintech Rappi.  

“Through these renewals and new partnerships, you can see how we are focused on building a deep relationship across all the capabilities Visa offers,” McInerney said. 

BY THE NUMBERS: Visa reported in Q1: 

• Net revenue increased 9% year over year to $8.6 billion; and 
• Visa Direct transactions increased 20% YoY to $2.2 billion. 

NOTEWORTHY: Earlier this month, Visa teamed up with HSBC on the launch of the London-based bank’s international transfer product, Zing, McInerney said. Zing is expected to compete with digital platforms like Wise and Revolut. 

“Starting with the U.K., we are supporting the ambition to launch this multi–currency proposition in more than 30 markets,” McInerney said.

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