New York, February 10, 2026, 11:44 (ET) — Regular session
- Visa picked up roughly 1% in late morning trading, recovering some ground after slipping on Monday.
- Payments stocks stayed in the spotlight after U.S. retail sales came in flat, keeping investors fixated on the consumer-spending narrative.
- Visa trades ex-dividend, qualifying shareholders for a $0.67 quarterly payout set for March 2. U.S. CPI numbers drop Friday.
Visa Inc (NYSE: V) climbed roughly 1% to $329.41 in late-morning trading Tuesday, bouncing back as payments stocks attracted buyers. Shares had dropped 1.81% the previous day, and remain about 13% off their 52-week high from June. 1
Investors are reevaluating the consumer picture, which directly affects card network revenues since those fees depend on spending levels by both individuals and businesses. In December, U.S. retail sales didn’t budge, catching markets off-guard, while “core” retail sales — a category that strips out autos, gas, building materials and food services — dipped by 0.1%. “Signs of earlier consumer strength may be starting to falter,” said Thomas Ryan, North America economist at Capital Economics. 2
A technical detail kicked in: Visa goes ex-dividend on Tuesday. Anyone picking up shares from then forward misses out on the next payout, as per dividend schedules. The company’s quarterly cash dividend clocks in at $0.67 per share, payable March 2 for those on record as of Feb. 10. 3
Stocks inched up at the open on Wall Street, with investors sifting through the retail sales numbers and bracing for further economic data due this week. After a robust kickoff to February for the main indexes, traders shifted rapidly among major liquid stocks. 4
Policy uncertainty isn’t going away for the big card networks outside the U.S. “We are highly dependent on international [payment] solutions,” Martina Weimert, who leads the European Payments Initiative, told the Financial Times. Europe is still hashing out ways to ease its dependence on Visa and Mastercard. The FT pointed to ECB data showing those two process close to two-thirds of all euro-zone card transactions. The EPI’s Wero wallet, rolled out in 2024, now counts 48.5 million users across Belgium, France, and Germany, according to the report. 5
Visa’s numbers have been under the microscope since late January, following an earnings beat boosted by holiday spending. Payment volumes worldwide climbed 8% in constant dollars, Reuters said, but cross-border growth slowed to 12%. Evercore ISI analysts flagged “some weakness in cross-border trends” in their review of the quarter. 6
Visa is touting expansion beyond the traditional card swipe, zeroing in on money movement as a key focus. In a Q&A released Tuesday, Tim Moncrieff, senior vice president at Visa Direct, described “cross-border payouts” as still relying on “fragmented rails,” and said clients are pushing for “certainty at scale.” According to the report, Visa Direct spans over 195 corridors and handles more than 150 currencies. 7
Still, there’s another side to this. Should new data keep signaling a weaker consumer, growth in payment volumes could fade fast, and with the sector trading at a premium, there’s little cushion for letdowns. Europe’s ongoing move toward homegrown alternatives also lingers in the background as a slow-burning risk, ready to jump into focus on a headline.
Eyes now turn to Friday’s U.S. consumer price index for January, out at 8:30 a.m. ET. That read could jolt rate forecasts, which in turn might feed into spending patterns and, by extension, the transaction volumes fueling Visa’s network. 8
