Ryan McInerney
Chief Executive Officer at Visa
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. Before we begin. I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the tragic loss of life and suffering in Israel and Gaza. We are in constant contact with our teams in Israel and throughout the region and I have the deepest admiration for their commitment to each other and their clients during this exceptionally challenging time. We continue to monitor the situation, prioritize the safety of our people, and stay close to our clients to ensure the continuity of business operations.
Turning now to our results. At the beginning of 2023, there was a lot of uncertainty around the macroeconomic environment with fears of a recession. There were many unknowns around FX, volatility, interest rates, and inflation. There was also some noise in our growth rates in early 2023 due to the effects of Omicron and the suspension of operations in Russia. Against that backdrop, Visa delivered. Total full-fiscal year, net revenues grew a 11% with GAAP EPS up 18% and non-GAAP EPS up 17%. Credentials grew 7%. We also surpassed 0.5 billion tokens. Total transactions, including cash and payment transactions, were $276 billion, which means that Visa credentials were used on average 757 million times a day during the fiscal year.
We signed over 500 commercial partnerships with fintechs globally from early-stage companies to growing and mature players up 25% versus last year. Merchant locations were up 17%, helped by strong growth in Latin America and CEMEA. Global tap-to-pay penetration excluding the US grew five points from last year to 76% of total face-to-face transactions and in the US penetration expanded 13 points to surpass 40%. Global tap-to-ride transactions were $1.6 billion for the full year of 2023, up over 30% and we added nearly 150 new transit systems throughout the year, such as in Philadelphia and Bangkok, bringing the footprint to more than 750 systems. More than 40% of our transit system launches this year also included our value-added services acceptance solutions. On the new flow side, total revenue grew 17% in constant dollars for the full year.
I will note a few highlights. Total commercial volume was $1.57 trillion, up 12% in constant dollars. We have increased the number of banks that have signed on to Visa B2B Connect by more than 70% this year and activation continues to happen with the number of transacting banks more than doubling. Visa Direct had 7.5 billion transactions up 19% year-over-year and nearly 30% excluding Russia across 65-plus use cases and over 2 800 programs helped by more than 500 enablers. Cross-border P2P transactions grew 65% year-over-year and reached a new record for payments volume in the fourth quarter. Value-added services revenue grew 18% for the full year in constant dollars.
Across our hundreds of products, our top 265 largest clients used 22 products on average, up 8% from last year versus our overall clients who used 11 products on average. With all of this strong momentum in performance, we finished the fourth quarter with net revenue growth of 11% and GAAP EPS growth of 22%. Other highlights from the fourth quarter include the following in constant dollars: global payments volume grew 9%, US payments volume grew 6%, international payments volume grew 11%, cross-border volume excluding intra-Europe grew 18% with cross-border travel up 26% year-over-year and processed transactions were up 10%. Across all of our growth levers, we continued to drive progress in innovation and money movement. As I mentioned last quarter when asked why Visa, our clients tell us they are choosing to deepen and expand their partnerships with us for a number of reasons including our people, our products, our value-added services, our new flows capabilities, and our brand. We continued to see that play out in our fourth quarter.
I'll walk through each one and highlight some examples. First, our people. We have the best team in the business and our clients tell us that they deeply value the advice, local support, and partnership from our outstanding teams who are laser-focused on helping our clients grow their businesses. Our clients also appreciate our thoughtful leadership on important and complex industry issues across the ecosystem. An example, this quarter was with U.S. Bank, one of the largest issuers in the United States. They have renewed our long-term agreement for their consumer and commercial portfolios.
In addition, we are engaging in consulting services and co-marketing projects that include leveraging our NFL sponsorship. Also in the US, we are very pleased to have renewed our long-standing relationship with top 20 US issuer F&BO across consumer, commercial, and value-added services. In Brazil, credit unions or cooperatives are fast-growing and we recently reached an expanded relationship with Pismo whose system spans nearly 340 cooperatives and 7.5 million members. In addition to our people, our payment products and innovations consistently help us win. We are constantly driving innovation and delivering next-generation payment solutions and experiences that enable our clients to better serve their customers and grow their businesses.
In terms of our capabilities to serve fintechs. In Colombia, we expanded our partnership with Rappi. The first digital wallet in the country to enable their 17 million-plus account holders for tap to pay with digital credentials. We also provide targeted offerings for certain customers. In India, we are focused on delivering market-leading offerings for affluent customers. With that in mind, we have signed with Fintech Amplify for a consumer credit offering for high-net-worth and mass-affluent customers. We also recently expanded our acceptance with Fintech Razorpay to enable Visa debit cards to purchase mutual funds and securities offering greater convenience to customers with higher payment success rates versus traditional methods.
And in the e-commerce seller space, we renewed our agreement with Shopify for the Balance card allowing Shopify's US sellers to access funds from sales by the next business day and receive cash-back on everyday business expenses like shipping and marketing. We also signed a new issuing agreement for small-business credit.
Next, our value-added services are helping us win. They help our clients innovate and grow, provide risk management solutions, and drive better outcomes for them and in turn for Visa. Our acceptance solutions including CyberSource have really resonated with clients this year. We sold more than 2,600 new acceptance services in over 100 countries. In North America, Costco has chosen Visa Acceptance Solutions including CyberSource for all of their US and Canadian e-commerce transactions. Alaska Airlines has selected CyberSource to process their kiosk payments in support of their initiative to transform the airport lobby experience.
In Asia-Pacific, China Merchants Bank, the largest issuer in Mainland China has renewed its consumer and small-business portfolios. In addition to our flagship risk management services, Visa Advanced Authorization and Visa Risk Manager, they will also expand their use of consulting services. Bank of China and AM Financial Service in Japan have also signed on to use VAA and VRF. In Latin America, we have been focused on expanding our processing penetration as it allows us to offer more value-added services to our customers. In Colombia, we have recently expanded our processing penetration through the addition of four more banks under our strategic agreement with Credibanco, the market's largest acquirer and issuer processor. This positions us to reach nearly 80% of domestic transactions by the end of FY '24 from essentially zero in 2019. As part of these agreements, banks have added anywhere from four to 11 value-added services, including risks and acceptance services.
As part of our network of network strategy, we continue to both collaborate with and offer our solutions in the real-time payment space, most recently with FedNow. In Q4, Visa became a certified service provider for FedNow using our service, Visa financial institution clients can receive funds in real-time through the FedNow Service with origination capabilities to follow. This means that Visa is now processing FedNow payments with the Clearing House RTP to follow in the next few months.
Now onto our new flows capabilities, which are increasingly an important differentiator to our clients. On the B2B side, we are pleased to have reached an expanded long-term global agreement across more than 60 countries with Citibank for their commercial card business, which also encompasses over 20 value-added services. We also recently won the IBM [Phonetic] Commercial card business spanning T&E meeting in purchasing card programs in over 60 countries also with Citibank as the issuer.
In Singapore, we renewed our longstanding partnership with DBS. The largest bank in Southeast Asia to continue offering commercial debit and credit services for consumers and expanded into new commercial products for small businesses. On the Visa Direct side, we continue to expand, Visa Direct's reach, especially to wallet endpoints. Most recently, we signed an agreement with Tencent for the Visa Direct cross-border remittance business. This will bring the total wallet reached for Visa Direct to over $2.5 billion. We've expanded our partnership with Paysend from US and UK payments to enable all of Paysend's customers across the globe to send money in real-time to eligible Visa cards across a 170 countries and territories. Paysend is also a currency Cloud Customer offering compelling cross-border solutions.
We also recently renewed with the largest issuer in Korea, Shinhan Card for consumer and business credit, which also incorporates the provision of our data capabilities in value-added services and the enablement of Visa Direct for cross-border remittances. We have also continued to add new Visa Direct use cases with our partners such as with small-ticket B2B payments and bill-pay. In Brazil, Banco BRB will enable Visa Direct for low-value high-velocity cross-border payments as part of their corporate banking business. In the US, payment platform, Everyware will be enabling bill payments with Visa Direct.
And last but certainly not least, our brand. Visa's brand strength helps deliver added value to our clients and their customers, financial institutions, merchants, and partners through a wide range of products and services as well as innovative brand and marketing efforts. We are pleased to have signed an agreement with Universal Destinations & Experiences to be the exclusive payment network for their new co-branded credit card that will be issued by FNBO. In addition, Visa is now the official way to pay at Universal Destinations & Experiences and together we will provide compelling benefits to Visa cardholders across their Orlando and Hollywood properties. Also in the US, we have recently renewed the Fidelity Investments co-brand credit portfolio issued by U.S. Bank and we signed with Coupang, a large retailer with 20 million customers in Korea for their inaugural co-brand card. And in CEMEA, we have signed a Saudi Airlines co-brand with Riyad Bank and we renewed our co-brand partnership with Etihad Guest, the loyalty program of Etihad Airways.
As we look ahead, we're excited to be activating our brand with clients and partners at the Paris 2024 and Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic summer games and winter games. Since 1986, Visa has been a proud sponsor of the Olympic movement, which provides an unparalleled opportunity to promote the Visa brand at a regional and global level, while also facilitating partnerships and joint business initiatives with clients. The games provide a unique platform for showcasing product innovation and engaging consumers and clients with exclusive experiences. We are looking forward to the upcoming games and we have been building momentum in the business across Europe with a particular focus on the continent.
I'll share a few recent highlights for our European business. On the people front. Payments is a local business and we have expanded into seven new locations over the past five years and have more than doubled our workforce in the market. On innovative products, we have well over 100 FinTech relationships and have expanded our capabilities through the acquisitions of Tink and Currencycloud. In new flows, Visa Direct has more than 100 enablers and over 1,000 programs with transactions more than doubling over the past two years.
And in value-added services, we have increased our client penetration. In VAA alone, the number of clients enrolled in the service has more than doubled since three years ago and we will be introducing nearly 20 additional products in 2024. We have been steadily building an attractive position on the continent and have built a strong pipeline of signed deals for the future by competing uniquely in each market. Active cards across Continental Europe have grown nearly 50% since 2019. Over the next few years, we expect to migrate more than 40 million cards across nearly 40 clients and the nature of the portfolios we are winning in Continental Europe tend to include more cross-border volume resulting in higher yields. So, our brand, our capabilities, our people, all of these make a difference for Visa's clients.
2023 had many milestones and solid financial performance. As we are now three weeks into our new fiscal year, I would like to make a few general points and then Chris will go into more detail. One, there are still macro uncertainty but just like in fiscal year '23, I am confident that we can manage through it. Our strategy and focus remain the same propelling growth across consumer payments, new flows, and value-added services. Two, we are focused on delivering for our stockholders. In that light, I'm sure that you saw that we released an 8-K back in September regarding our potential exchange offer program. We appreciate the dialog we've had with Class A, B, and C stockholders, and the Board is evaluating the next steps as we continue to engage with investors. Finally, you may have seen today that we announced a $25 billion multi-year share repurchase program, which reflects our Board's confidence in our strategy and future potential. I continue to see tremendous opportunity ahead. Visa has the brand, the capabilities, the strategy, and most importantly, the people to propel our growth for years to come.
And with that, let me hand it over to Chris.
