Suffering Under Credit Card Debt? Visa Isn’t

Of course, it’s pure economics, and just the way the world goes round, but I’m sure plenty of you don’t feel that great when you read that one of the world’s largest credit card companies, Visa, made a larger-than-usual profit this quarter.

The cause of this profit surge is firstly that, across the globe, more people are spending more money using the Visa network. In fact, year on year, the revenue of Visa increased 22% up to US$1.45 billion - that’s a whole lot of credit card purchases! That means that despite the United States economy being a little shaky, San Francisco based Visa is doing very well. Areas like the Asia-Pacific region have seen a big jump in spending, but despite that it is actually still the domestic purchases in the United States using Visa cards that form the largest chunk of Visa’s revenue.

On top of additional public spending across the world, Visa says its profit was also derived from increases in fees. That means not only are we increasing Visa’s profits through the spending we do and the interest we owe them, but also because we have to pay more and more fees. These are the kinds of figures that make you reconsider having a credit card, don’t they?