Visa’s Q3 earnings reveal a quiet but serious bet on AI and stablecoins

Visa just reported one of its strongest quarters on record. The company’s fiscal Q3 2026 revenue came in at $11.63 billion, up 14% compared to the same period last year. Total payment volume crossed $4 trillion for the first time. Visa has deployed over 150 AI-powered applications across its business. Management specifically called out “agentic commerce” as an expanding addressable market — AI agents that can autonomously make purchases on behalf of users, book services, pay for subscriptions, handle procurement. The company also announced a workforce reduction of approximately 7%, concentrated in technology and product roles. Visa is routing the savings back into stablecoin infrastructure and AI development rather than to the bottom line. On the stablecoin front, Visa launched its Stablecoin Platform on July 16, 2026. The platform covers minting, moving, and managing stablecoins, with initial support for OUSD through a partnership with the Open Standard consortium. The company’s stablecoin settlement pilot, which expanded to support nine different blockchains after an April 2026 upgrade, reached a record annualized settlement run rate of $7 billion. Visa also reported that over 13...