Visa net profit increased 25 percent in the last three months of 2012, up from $1.03 billion a year ago to $1.29 billion. Consumers used their credit and debit cards more often during holiday shopping.
Visa, the world's largest payment network, processed 14.2 billion transactions during the quarter, up 4 percent from a year ago. The dollar volume of payments made by Visa cardholders rose by 9 percent.
U.S. debit card purchase volume dropped by almost 4 percent versus year-ago levels, and this followed a nearly 6 percent decline the previous quarter. But debit and credit card transactions overseas jumped 21 percent.
Revenue from data processing rose 17 percent to $1.1 billion, while international transactions revenue grew 8 percent to $805 million. In November, consumers increased their borrowing by $16 billion from September to a seasonally adjusted record of $2.77 trillion.
"I am more bullish today about the opportunities that we have than the day I joined," recently-hired Visa CEO Charles Scharf said during his first conference call.
