Visa and Mastercard Report Earnings This Week: Slowing Cross-Border Transactions Take Center Stage
Taylor Wilson
Visa and Mastercard report quarterly earnings this week. Cross-border transaction growth plunged from 8% to 2% — the number that reveals how much global travel and cross-border spending have actually cooled.
Are American consumers really spending more?
U.S. retail sales rose 6.4% year-on-year from April through June — but most of that gain came from higher prices. The PCE inflation gauge climbed 5.10% over the same period.
This means → strip out inflation, and real spending growth is roughly 1.3 percentage points, far weaker than the headline suggests.
June's month-on-month inflation pace slowed from 1.0% in May to 0.2%, easing price pressure — but spending momentum is cooling in tandem.
What are Wall Street's earnings expectations?
Visa's adjusted EPS for the quarter ending June 30 is forecast at $3.23, up 8.4% year-on-year. Payment volume is expected at $3.95 trillion, up 9.2% but below last quarter's $4.36 trillion.
Mastercard's Q2 adjusted EPS is forecast at $4.78, up 15% year-on-year. Total payment volume is expected at $2.87 trillion, up 8.6%.
In plain terms = Mastercard is growing profits faster, but Visa processes a bigger pool of transactions — two different rhythms.
Why has cross-border activity become the focal point?
Citi analyst Brian Keane flagged cross-border transactions as the single most important operating metric for investors this quarter.
Mastercard's numbers are the starkest: growth in the first four weeks of April dropped to 2%, down from 8% in Q1, hit by the Middle East conflict, shifts in payment mix, and the timing of Easter and Ramadan.
Visa's cross-border slowdown was concentrated in travel routes, while cross-border e-commerce growth still outpaced travel. This means → Visa faces less exposure to volatility on any single travel corridor.
Where do analysts disagree on the two stocks?
Evercore ISI analyst Adam Frisch argued that Visa's expectations are already elevated after a strong prior quarter. Of the three tailwinds that drove that beat, only value-added services may persist — FX volumes and incentive costs could flip to headwinds.
He sees Mastercard's quarter as "middle of the road," with less value-added-services volatility than Visa. Evercore currently prefers Mastercard over Visa, citing better relative performance potential in the second half.
Other analysts expect Visa to deliver a "business as usual" beat and want to hear more about AI, stablecoins, tokenization, and agentic infrastructure on the earnings call.
What is the single most important thing to watch?
Rival American Express already posted disappointing Q2 revenue — new card acquisitions fell below the prior quarter — adding uncertainty for both Visa and Mastercard.
Cross-border fees remain a major revenue driver: Mastercard's Q2 cross-border fee income is forecast to rise 11% year-on-year to $3.3 billion; Visa's constant-currency cross-border volume growth is also projected at 11%.
This reflects a core tension: cross-border revenue growth still looks respectable, but the underlying transaction volume already hit the brakes in April. Whether cross-border activity stabilizes in Q2 is the most critical falsification point in these earnings.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.