Visa, Mastercard: Time to rethink/revisit the U.S. Card growth debate?

Research evidence excerpt

20 August 2026

Payments, Processors & IT Services

Visa, Mastercard: Time to rethink/revisit the U.S. Card growth

debate?

Harshita Rawat, CFA

Simran Ratani

Viola Chen

‘How much secular growth runway remains in the U.S.’ used to be a key investor question until it stopped being so after 2+ years of U.S. card volumes basically growing in-line with

reported PCE. As many investors know, we have published extensively on secular growth

runway for cards over a decade+ (see our latest long view note). In this note, we will discuss

why we believe investors should dust off the U.S. card volume growth topic.

Last quarter, V/MA reported U.S. volume growth of 10% (adj. for Discover

migration) - strongest since 2q23 and, if you exclude pandemic recovery, since 2019.

For much of the past 3 years, investors have heavily debated the growth algorithm of V/

MA and whether the U.S. is now largely a mature market for cards with expected future

card volume growth at 5-6%. While one quarter (which benefited from higher tax refunds,

gas prices, retail promotional events, FIFA) doesn’t establish a trend - we note that

U.S. card volumes have been consistently outpacing PCE by 2-3ppt over the past

few quarters - in line with pre-pandemic trends. Note that U.S. card volumes are

outgrowing PCE by 2ppt even if we adj. numbers for Visa Direct.

More importantly, cards’ growth has a strong correlation with e-commerce growth,

and e-commerce growth has been accelerating since late last year. For example, US

e-commerce growth was 12% in 2q, 9% - vs. 9%/8%/5% average in 2023, 2024 and

2025 respectively. E-commerce tends to be more carded vs. in-person commerce, and also

ties in more closely with discretionary spend - where cards historically had a higher share.

Is it a surprise that card volume growth deceleration came at a time when e-commerce

growth decelerated meaningfully post-pandemic?

Is the acceleration of e-commerce a blip or structural? While there is certainly a

case to be made for a blip (especially with tax refunds, Prime Day timing) this quarter,

we note that e-commerce has been strong since late last year.…