Visa HQ

The Foster City-headquartered firm recorded a profit of $1.7bn in the March quarter compared to $1.5bn in the same quarter last year.

Visa chief executive officer Charlie Scharf said: "The continued headwinds of the strong US dollar, lower oil prices, and an uneven global economy are driving continued weak cross-border spend, but domestic spend continues at reasonably strong levels consistent with last quarter. In fact, most of our growth metrics look very similar to what we saw last quarter."

Its revenue rose 6% to $3.6bn in the January-March quarter on year-over-year basis, helped by continued growth in processed transactions and nominal payments volume.

The company made a gain of $116m during the quarter, by entering into currency forward contracts to offset a part of the exchange rate risk related to the upfront cash consideration to be paid in the anticipated Visa Europe acquisition.

However, Visa lowered its revenue growth forecast for the year to 7% to 8% range on a constant dollar basis, citing weakness in China, Brazil, and oil based economies.

Scharf said: "The U.S. consumer remains strong, but we see weakness in China, Brazil, and oil based economies. Since we are not seeing any material improvements in economic trends, we are cautious as we head into the second half of fiscal 2016."

The company saw a 12% growth in its payments volume to $1.3 trillion in the March quarter compared to the corresponding quarter in 2015. Cross-border volume growth rose 5% in the quarter.

Total processed transactions increased by 9% $18.5bn, while service revenues rose 8% to $1.7bn. Its operating expenses were up 6% to $1.2bn, mainly due to increase in personnel, general and administrative, and network and processing expenses.


Image: Building at 900 Metro Center Boulevard in Foster City is the former headquarters of Visa Inc. Photo courtesy of Coolcaesar/Wikipedia.