by Matt Rej
Visa and Mastercard both reported earnings this week. It kicked off with Visa’s F2Q26 results announced on April 28th, followed by Mastercard’s 1Q26 earnings on April 30th
Since Visa and Mastercard process the majority of card transactions here in the US, their results can often foreshadow changes for merchants in the coming months. We covered this back in January, and the themes from that previous post have definitely spilled over to now.
Here’s what merchants need to know:
- Visa is telling investors that “second half weighted pricing” is going into effect this year.
- Value-added services are a growing share of network revenue, and these costs often trickle down to merchant statements.
- Cross-border travel is slowing due to the conflict in the Middle East.
- But cross-border commerce is still climbing (which costs more to process).
- Agentic commerce has shifted from “coming soon” to actually launching, with new fee categories being built around it.
- Stablecoins are being positioned to “increase economic growth” for networks, as opposed to reducing costs for merchants.
Now let’s dive into the details.
Visa’s 2Q26 Summary: Big Quarter With Pricing Changes Later This Year
Overall, Visa had a really strong quarter. Their net revenue grew 17% (vs. 15% previous qtr), which CEO Ryan McInerly described as their strongest growth since 2022.
Other key numbers include:
- Payment volume up 9% (vs. 8% last qtr)
- US payment volume up 8% (vs. 7% last qtr)
- US credit volume up 10% (vs. 7% last qtr)
- International volume up 10% (vs. 9% last qtr)
- Processed transactions up 9% (in line with last qtr)
- VAS revenue up 27% (vs. 25% last qtr)
But the key details that stood out to me was actually about forward guidance.
CFO Christopher Suh walked through expectations for Q3 on the call. And he specifically mentioned “second half weighted pricing going into effect” as one of the factors offsetting other dynamics.
That’s about as direct as it gets.
Though to be fair, Suh also said there were “no material changes in pricing assumptions” compared to what Visa laid out earlier in the year. So this isn’t a brand-new pricing announcement. But it confirms that previously planned pricing will still take effect on schedule.
Either way, the practical impact for merchants is the same.
When a publicly traded payment network tells investors that pricing actions are taking effect in the second half of the year, they aren’t just referring to issuers. Those costs have a trickle-down effect that most definitely land on merchant statements.
And since Visa’s fiscal second half runs from April through September, this is something that’s going to happen sooner than later.
Mastercard 1Q26 Summary: Growth Slowed, But Overall Still Strong
Mastercard’s results were a bit more mixed. Currency-material net revenue grew 12% (vs. 15% previous qtr). This is obviously still healthy, but clearly slower.
Other numbers worth mentioning:
- Worldwide GDV up 7% (same as last quarter)
- US GDV up 4% (same as last quarter)
- US credit GDV up 8% (vs. 6.5% last quarter)
- US debit GDV up 1% (vs. 2.4% last quarter)
- Cross-border volume up 13% (vs. 14% last quarter)
- VAS and Solutions revenues up 18% (vs. 22% last quarter)
The two main factors causing Mastercard’s slower growth are the conflict in the Middle East slowing cross-border travel and the migration of Capital One’s debit portfolio moving off Mastercard’s network.
Mastercard CFO Sachin Mehra was upfront with investors about expectations moving forward, saying that Q2 results will likely be even more impacted by what’s happening in the Middle East. And he explicitly said that without this conflict, the Q2 growth forecast “would have been generally in line with the first quarter.”
VAS Continues to Be a Major Story From Both Networks
I covered this in detail a few months ago, and the trend is still very much in play for both Visa and Mastercard.
Visa’s value added services revenue grew 27% in F2Q26, up from 25% last quarter. And Mastercard’s VAS and Solutions were up 18%, though down a bit from 22% growth from the previous quarter.
Even though Mastercard’s VAS/Solutions growth didn’t keep pace with last quarter, it’s still well above its overall network growth rate.
To put Visa’s number into better context, VAS now represents 30% of Visa’s total net revenue. Their CEO described it on the earnings call as “an even bigger opportunity” than before, and called out that Visa’s VAS revenue has “durable competitive advantages” because most of it is linked to transactions, cards, and accounts.
So where does that money come from?
Technically, it’s coming directly from issuers, acquirers, and processors that pay Visa and Mastercard for various products. Fraud detection, tokenization, dispute resolution, account updater services, AI-authorization tools, and dozens of others, are all examples of VAS.
But processors and banks aren’t going to eat those costs. So they ultimately make their way down to merchants in the form of fees, higher discount rates, or increased markups elsewhere.
So there is definitely a correlation in Visa’s VAS growth and merchant fees for your business.
Cross-Border Results Were Mixed
Cross-border payment volume is still an important high-growth driver for both networks. But as I’ve said throughout this post, Visa and Mastercard are both pointing fingers at war in the Middle East.
Let’s look at some numbers.
Visa:
- Total cross-border volume up 11% (same last last qtr)
- Cross-border ecommerce up 13% (vs. 12% last qtr)
- Cross-border travel up 10% (same as last qtr)
- Cross-border travel slowed to 5% (through April 21st)
Mastercard:
- Cross-border volume up 13% (vs. 14% last qtr)
- Cross-border travel up 8% (vs. 11% last qtr)
- Cross-border CNP ex-travel up 18% (vs. 19% last qtr)
- April month-to-date cross-border travel up 2%
The key takeaway for merchants here is that cross-border ecommerce remains a major growth driver, even though travel-related numbers have slowed. And if you sell to international customers online, you’re still paying higher interchange and assessment fees on those transactions and that’s not going to change.
What you can control is how much your processor marks up those transactions on top of your network costs. So it’s worth auditing your statements for any international card handling fees, or other processor-specific charges for accepting foreign-issued cards.
Agentic Commerce is Rolling Out Faster Than You Might Be Prepared For
Despite OpenAI killing instant checkout a couple months ago, agentic commerce is still progressing in 2026. Particularly with even bigger players already embedded in the payment space (like Visa and Mastercard).
On Mastercard’s latest earnings call, CEO Michael Miebach announced that “nearly all Mastercards around the world are now enabled for Mastercard Agent pay.”
They also launched something called “verifiable intent” in Q1, which Miechback described as a “tamper-resistant record of what a user authorized when an AI agent acts on their behalf.”
Additionally, the FIDO Alliance is now using verifiable intent as a foundation for security setting standards in agentic commerce.
Visa is also making headway here. They launched Visa CLI as a proof-of-concept, which allows developers to use Visa credentials to pay for digital services directly from the command line. Visa’s Intelligent Commerce Connect is also in the works, which is a way to facilitate real transactions using Visa agentic tokens.
Why does this matter for merchants?
All of these agentic commerce solutions are built on top of tokenization infrastructure. And tokenization is already a profit center for networks.
So as agentic commerce scales, you could expect entirely new fee categories to emerge at the network level.
This is literally happening right now. Visa specifically said they plan to scale CLI commerce with “standards, products, rules, and pricing.” That last word is the one I’d pay attention to.
Stablecoins Are Becoming a Real Business Driver
Similarly, stablecoins have also moved from what was once a futuristic side conversation to something that’s driving real revenue for the networks.
Visa shared some impressive numbers:
- 160 stablecoin card programs across partners like Rain, Reap, and Bridge
- Stablecoin payments are up ~200% YoY
- $7 billion annual run rate in stablecoin settlement volume (up over 50% from last quarter)
- Added 5 additional blockchains for settlement: Arc, BAse, Canton, Polygon, and Temp
Numbers aside, Visa’s CEO said something that I think is worth flagging on the call. McInerney described Visa’s solutions as something that have “very similar economics to the products we have today.”
Translation: When stablecoins pass through Visa’s network, they generate similar revenue per transaction as traditional card payments.
Visa isn’t undercutting itself with a cheaper alternative. They’re using stablecoin rails as another way to generate revenue using the same economics as cards.
For most merchants, stablecoins won’t directly impact your processing volume in the short term. But the long-term implication is that networks are positioning themselves to ensure profitability regardless of how transactions will be processed. And there’s no scenario where stablecoins are going to drive down what you’re paying to accept payments.
What Wasn’t Discussed on These Earnings Calls (Again)
I made this point in January but it’s worth repeating because it’s proof of what I’ve been saying all along.
Neither network spent any meaningful time talking about the $38 billion Visa/Mastercard settlement proposal or the Credit Card Competition Act during their calls. Both earnings calls were focused entirely on growth, new products, agentic commerce, and stablecoins.
The reason why this is worth calling out is because it tells you exactly how the networks feel about this internally. It’s essentially a non-issue.
If it was a real threat, it would be front and center on every call.
So if you’re hoping that regulatory action might eventually drive down your processing costs, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
How Merchants Can Prepare
There’s a lot of information in these quarterly earnings calls, and I just barely scratched the surface above. But the practical takeaways for merchants are pretty straightforward.
Start by controlling what you actually can.
- Audit your statements now to look for optimization opportunities.
- Pay attention to cross-border markups if you accept international cards.
- Don’t pay for any VAS that you don’t actually need (as processors are trying to “auto-enroll” you into services and upsell you).
If you’d like an expert opinion on what you’re currently paying or want help auditing your statements ahead of any network-level changes, just contact me or my team for a free consultation.
We’ll review your processing costs and identify opportunities to slash your fees before more increases hit your account. And you won’t have to switch providers.