Mastercard delivered a strong first quarter, but the earnings call showed a company adjusting to a payments world that is splitting across new technologies and rails.
Much like Visa, Mastercard celebrated a successful quarter on the earnings call, but questions were quickly asked about whether that performance can be replicated in the next quarter.
There are many challenges the payments giant faces at the moment, with the ongoing conflict in the Middle East having a direct impact on cross-border payment volume and therefore revenue.
However, the company expects this to be temporary, with Q2 likely to bear the worst of the impact before recovery begins later in the year.
In addition to these short-term pressures, a greater challenge is that more countries are exploring or launching domestic payment schemes to reduce reliance on global networks, with Europe a prime example.
Mastercard has stayed quiet on the issue for the most part, but addressed this trend on the call.
“A lot of countries are looking to have their own payment system… but it turns out that digital capabilities are really hard to do,” said Michael Miebach, CEO of Mastercard.
He explained that the company is leaning into this complexity, arguing its infrastructure, security and tokenisation are difficult to replicate, allowing it to embed and stay relevant even as markets look for greater control over payments.
Key Q1 2026 financial highlights
Diving into the figures, Mastercard’s first-quarter results showed this strategy is already in place, with strong growth across both its core network and value-added services.
- Net revenue rose 16% year-on-year to $8.4bn, or 12% on a currency-neutral basis
- Net income increased 18% to $3.9bn, with diluted EPS up 21% to $4.35
- Adjusted net income reached $4.1bn, with adjusted EPS of $4.60
- Gross dollar volume grew 7% globally, reaching $2.7tn
- Purchase volume increased 9%, while switched transactions rose 9%
- Cross-border volume was a standout, up 13% year-on-year
Value‑added services and solutions grew 22% (18% currency‑neutral), showing a growing demand for security, authentication, data insights and marketing services that now sit at the heart of Mastercard’s strategy.
Operating income climbed 18% to $4.9bn, lifting margins to 58.4% and showing the model’s scalability despite continued investment in infrastructure and innovation.
Elsewhere, the company also returned substantial capital, buying back $4bn of stock and paying $777m in dividends.
Agentic payments and stablecoins
The call also provided a view of where Mastercard believes payments are heading, with the company highlighting agentic commerce and stablecoins as the two areas it intends to lead.
On agentic commerce, Mastercard set out how it is preparing for payments initiated by AI agents acting on behalf of consumers and businesses.
Its Agent Pay framework is already being adopted by partners, including OpenAI, with features such as “Verifiable Intent” designed to give transactions a secure record of user authorisation.
Executives said the company’s infrastructure is “ready” for this change and described Mastercard as a natural layer for AI‑driven transactions as agent‑initiated payments begin to grow.
Stablecoins were the second, and arguably more advanced, strand of its strategy, with Mastercard expanding its capabilities across the digital‑asset lifecycle, enabling purchases, supporting settlement and integrating stablecoins into its “Move” platform.
The acquisition of BVNK is significant to this push, providing Mastercard with the ability to bridge fiat and stablecoin rails at a time when interoperability is more important than ever.
Miebach noted: “as digital assets scale, complexity grows,” demonstrating the need for trusted infrastructure which can connect both systems.
Mastercard vs Visa
When putting Mastercard’s first quarter results alongside Visa’s recent Q2 2026 results (Mastercard uses a calendar year as opposed to a fiscal year, which Visa uses. Mastercard’s Q1 results cover the same period as Visa’s Q2 results), there is a similarity in direction of travel.
Both companies have reported strong financial performances, but more notably, both gestured a move away from traditional card payments and towards building the infrastructure around the next generation.
Visa posted its strongest net revenue growth in four years in the fiscal second quarter, with revenues up 17% year on year to $11.2bn for the three months ending March 2026, as consumer payments, commercial activity and stablecoin settlement all accelerated.
Adjusted EPS of $3.31 beat the $3.10 consensus estimate, while payment volume grew 9% in constant dollars to $3.7tn and processed transactions kept pace at 66 billion.
For both Visa and Mastercard, value-added services were mentioned as a primary growth engine, showing a rising demand for fraud prevention, data insights and authentication tools layered on top of core networks.
Stablecoins were also highlighted by both as a complementary payment rail rather than a replacement for cards, with growing activity in settlement, cross-border payments and digital asset integration.
At the same time, both Mastercard and Visa noted agentic commerce as a longer-term opportunity, preparing their networks for a future where AI-driven transactions become more common.
