Visa Inc. is one of the most consistently profitable large-cap businesses on the planet, and its multi-year financials back that up convincingly. Revenue has grown from roughly $21.8 billion in fiscal 2020 to $40 billion in fiscal 2025 — nearly doubling in five years — while net margins have stayed above 49% every single year, and operating margins have held close to 65% throughout. The business is extraordinarily capital-light, spending only about 3–4 cents of every revenue dollar on capital expenditures. Debt levels are modest relative to equity, and the most recent quarter ending March 2026 shows no meaningful deterioration in any of these metrics. In short, Visa continues to operate as a high-margin, asset-light toll booth on global electronic payments, compounding revenue at a double-digit rate with very little need to reinvest heavily to do so.
Snapshot & Big Picture
Visa operates the world's largest retail electronic payments network, connecting consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and governments across more than 200 countries. Its economic model is built on volume — transaction fees, data processing fees, and international service fees — rather than on taking credit risk, which is why its margins are structurally high and remarkably stable. The company's fiscal year ends September 30.
| Fiscal Year End | Revenue | EBITDA | Operating Margin | Net Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2019 | $22.98B | $15.66B | 65.3% | 52.6% |
| Sep 2020 | $21.85B | $14.85B | 64.5% | 49.7% |
| Sep 2021 | $24.11B | $16.61B | 65.6% | 51.1% |
| Sep 2022 | $29.31B | $19.67B | 64.2% | 51.0% |
| Sep 2023 | $32.65B | $21.94B | 64.3% | 52.9% |
| Sep 2024 | $35.93B | $24.63B | 65.7% | 54.9% |
| Sep 2025 | $40.00B | $25.21B | 60.0% | 50.1% |
Latest Quarter Snapshot
The most recent data available — and more current than the annual figures above — comes from the 10-Q for the quarter ending March 31, 2026. Quarterly revenue came in at $11.23 billion, with EBITDA of $7.57 billion. The operating margin held at 64.4% and the net margin at 53.6%, both fully consistent with Visa's long-run profitability profile. The current ratio stood at 1.09, and the debt-to-equity ratio was 0.67 — both broadly in line with recent annual figures. Gross margin was not separately reported in the filing. Overall, this quarter shows a business operating steadily, with no signs of margin compression or balance sheet stress.
Profitability
Visa's profitability record across seven fiscal years is striking for its consistency. Operating margins have ranged from 60.0% to 65.7% — a remarkably tight band for a company growing revenue at double-digit rates. Net margins have stayed between 49.7% and 54.9%. The slight dip in both operating and net margin in fiscal 2025 (to 60.0% and 50.1%, respectively) is worth monitoring, though both figures remain well above almost any peer in any industry. Gross margin data was not available in the 10-K filings for any period reviewed. EBITDA has grown every single year in the dataset, rising from $14.85 billion in fiscal 2020 to $25.21 billion in fiscal 2025 — a 70% increase over five years.
Financial Health
Visa's balance sheet has remained solid throughout the review period. The current ratio has trended down from a peak of 1.91 in fiscal 2020 to 1.08 in fiscal 2025, and stood at 1.09 in the March 2026 quarter — indicating adequate but not excessive short-term liquidity. The debt-to-equity ratio has moved in a narrow range of 0.48 to 0.66 over the full period, suggesting disciplined and stable use of leverage without any meaningful buildup of debt.
Capital Expenditures: Visa is a classic asset-light business, and the capex data confirms it. Annual capital expenditures have risen in dollar terms — from $705 million in fiscal 2021 to $1.48 billion in fiscal 2025 — but as a share of revenue, the ratio has been remarkably stable, hovering between 2.9% and 3.7% throughout. The most recent quarter (March 2026) showed capex of $378 million, or 3.4% of quarterly revenue, consistent with the annual trend. Rising absolute capex likely reflects ongoing investment in network infrastructure, security, and technology platforms, but the stable capex-to-revenue ratio makes clear that growth is not becoming more capital-intensive over time. This is a meaningful competitive advantage: Visa can scale revenue substantially without a proportional increase in reinvestment.
| Period | Capital Expenditures | CapEx / Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 2019 | $756M | 3.3% |
| Sep 2020 | $736M | 3.4% |
| Sep 2021 | $705M | 2.9% |
| Sep 2022 | $970M | 3.3% |
| Sep 2023 | $1,059M | 3.2% |
| Sep 2024 | $1,257M | 3.5% |
| Sep 2025 | $1,482M | 3.7% |
| Q2 FY2026 (Mar 2026) | $378M | 3.4% |
Growth
Visa's revenue CAGR figures across available windows are presented below. The 10-year CAGR is not available because the SEC filing history in the dataset does not extend back far enough to construct a valid 10-year window.
| Window | Start Fiscal Year | End Fiscal Year | Start Revenue | End Revenue | Revenue CAGR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3-Year | Sep 2022 | Sep 2025 | $29.31B | $40.00B | 10.9% |
| 5-Year | Sep 2020 | Sep 2025 | $21.85B | $40.00B | 12.9% |
| 10-Year | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | Not available — filing history does not extend back 10 years in this dataset |
The 5-year CAGR of 12.9% outpacing the 3-year CAGR of 10.9% reflects the lower base from the COVID-affected fiscal 2020 year. Even so, a sustained ~11% three-year revenue CAGR on a $40 billion revenue base is a strong result for a mature payments network, and it suggests Visa continues to benefit from secular tailwinds in global digital payment adoption rather than simply recovering from a one-time disruption.
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