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Mastercard Incorporated (MA) Presents at RBC Capital Markets Global Financial Technology Conference 2026 Transcript

More than 30 industry leaders, including Adyen, Ant International, BVNK, Checkout.com, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Getnet by Santander, Global Payments, Lovable Labs Incorporated, OKX, Stripe and Tempo, are among the first to leverage and support adoption

PURCHASE, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The rise of AI has created new ways to buy and sell goods and services. Now it’s requiring a new class of payments.

“Agent Pay for Machines will create the conditions for a superbloom of AI business models,” said Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief product officer.

Share Mastercard envisions a future where businesses create services for AI agents to buy and use. Operating at machine speed, these agents could transact with each other continuously at high velocity, executing chains of transactions, including microtransactions. This shift could unlock a massive new wave of innovation, business models and economic activity, where any company, from solopreneurs to the largest enterprises, can become a virtual powerhouse.

To enable this new form of commerce, Mastercard developed a new way to pay for these services: payments, some only fractions of a cent, to be completed quickly, programmatically and securely. Today, the company is introducing Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), a new service that will allow these transactions to be permissioned, orchestrated and settled at machine speed across its global payments network.

“Agent Pay for Machines will create the conditions for a superbloom of AI business models,” said Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief product officer. “Machine payments can make it possible for services to be bought and sold among agents at fundamentally different scales than payments today — very high volumes, very small values, very fast and at extremely low latency.”

Unlike traditional point-of-sale or person-to-merchant payments, which are discrete and user-initiated, these transactions are programmatic, always-on and executed between systems in the background of digital commerce. Agent Pay for Machines allows Mastercard network participants to bring the trust and controls of the company’s global network to machine-driven commerce, helping AI innovators enable secure, reliable payments as software begins to transact on its own.

Building a new class of payments

AI agents are no longer just assisting decisions. They are able to act on human intent, coordinate services and complete transactions that are bespoke for their users. An entrepreneur opening a flower shop could instruct an AI agent to build and launch the store's web presence — buying a domain name, a hosting service, images and checkout pages within a defined budget — turning one human-initiated request into a chain of transactions executed automatically across providers.

Or a logistics agent managing a delivery route could pay for freight, reserve loading-bay access, purchase temporary cold-chain monitoring data and settle warehouse handling fees automatically as a shipment moves from origin to destination.

Payments don’t just increase. They change form. They become continuous, embedded, permissioned and executed at machine speed. And that creates a new requirement: infrastructure that can keep up.

In this new environment, businesses need peace of mind they will get paid. Agents need transactions to move instantly, with every transaction completed securely and as expected. Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines is designed to meet these needs.

The service builds on Mastercard’s Agent Pay program, introduced in 2025, by providing a system to scale high-frequency, low-latency, low-value payments executed by agents and machines. Where Agent Pay defines how trusted AI agents participate in payments, Agent Pay for Machines is designed for a complementary opportunity: automated, micro- and machine-driven transactions that happen continuously in the background of digital commerce.

This is where Mastercard’s global network plays a critical role. Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines supports credentialing, controls and guaranteed settlement across multiple payment types, from cards to stablecoins, enabling organizations to deploy automated payments with the interoperability, reliability and governance that the digital economy requires.

How it works

Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines establishes a trusted system for machine-driven transactions through a set of foundational capabilities:

Credentialing: Every agent is credentialed, and with Verifiable Intent, can be recognized and transact with trust across ecosystems. Permissioning: Organizations can set authorization rules and spending limits that are programmatically enforced, ensuring transactions stay within defined parameters. Transacting: Verified participants can connect and transact across providers and systems, enabling continuous, high-frequency automated commerce. Settling: Supports reliable, guaranteed multi-rail settlement across cards, accounts and stablecoins. Transactions move predictably, improving transparency and consistency.

Partnering to scale an open ecosystem

Mastercard is collaborating with a broad set of partners to validate priority use cases, establish common rules and accelerate adoption across industries. Initial participants and supporters include: Aave Labs, Adyen, Alchemy, Anchorage Digital, Ant International, Basis Theory, BVNK, Catena, Checkout.com, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Coinflow, Crossmint, Getnet by Santander, Global Payments, Lovable Labs Incorporated, Mastercard Merchant Cloud, MoonPay, Nevermined, OKX, PayOS, Polygon, Rain, RippleX, Sapiom, Skyfire, Solana Foundation, Stripe, t54 Labs, Tempo, Turnkey and Utila.

This reflects Mastercard’s commitment to building an open, interoperable framework that works across technologies, providers and payment types.

Supporting the next phase of digital commerce

Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines expands Mastercard’s efforts to enable trusted digital interactions, from identity and authentication to trusted data exchange, so businesses can adopt new technologies without compromising the security, reliability and reach they expect from Mastercard’s global network. Together with Agent Pay and Verifiable Intent, Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines reflects Mastercard’s continued investment in building trusted, open infrastructure for autonomous, agent-driven and machine-driven payments.

To learn more about Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines, please visit https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/business/artificial-intelligence/mastercard-agent-pay/agent-pay-for-machines.html.

Quote Sheet

“Payments and treasury management are inseparable,” said Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave Labs. “As Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines transforms payments, Aave delivers the foundational credit layer and deep liquidity to optimize treasury capital at machine speed.”

“Machine-to-machine payments are still in their early stages, but the infrastructure decisions made now will determine how this space develops,” said Karan Katyal, head of Agentic Commerce at Adyen. “Building these foundations with partners like Mastercard, openly and with merchant outcomes at the center, is how we ensure this next era of commerce works for everyone in the ecosystem.”

“We're heading toward an economy where most transactions never involve a person at all - machines paying each other, constantly, for things too small to bother a human with. That unlocks business models nobody can build today, but only once the payment layer can keep up,” said Joe Lau, co-founder and president of Alchemy. “Getting that right is one of the most important problems in tech right now.”

"The future of commerce isn't just digital, it's autonomous. At Anchorage Digital, we've long believed that programmable, machine-driven payments are the inevitable next layer of financial infrastructure, and this collaboration with Mastercard turns that conviction into reality,” said Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO, Anchorage Digital. “What makes this initiative so significant is that it brings together the trust and global reach of Mastercard's network with the flexibility of multi-rail settlement, including digital assets, creating a foundation that our clients can build on with confidence. This is exactly the kind of open, interoperable infrastructure the industry needs to bring agentic commerce to scale.”

"We are pleased to partner with Mastercard to accelerate the growth of agentic commerce through continuous innovation in agent-driven payments,” said Jiang-Ming Yang, chief innovation officer, Ant International. “Through Antom, our merchant payment service, Ant International empowers global merchants to access leading agentic commerce platforms with one simple integration while delivering cutting-edge agentic payment capabilities and seamless payment experiences. Together, we are helping merchants capture new growth opportunities in the AI commerce era with greater security, intelligence, and efficiency."

“Agentic commerce only matters if it helps humans get something done. The payment should fade into the background while the business, the agent, and the merchant coordinate around the customer’s intent,” said James Armstead, chief technology officer at Basis Theory. “That’s the future Mastercard is helping unlock, and Basis Theory is excited to help bring it to life.”

“We’re seeing a fundamental shift in commerce as businesses increasingly use AI agents to transact on their behalf,” said Chris Harmse, co-founder and chief business officer at BVNK. “At BVNK, we believe stablecoins will play a powerful role in enabling this change, bringing greater speed, programmability and efficiency to how value moves. Our position at the intersection of currencies, rails and formats makes us uniquely well-suited to power agentic commerce at scale, enabling trusted movement of value with the controls, reliability, visibility and flexibility that merchants need.”

“Catena gives businesses a single control plane to govern agent-driven payments across networks and rails, applying identity, policies, approvals and auditability wherever money moves,” said Sean Neville, CEO of Catena. “Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines initiative is an important addition to that interoperable ecosystem, and we’re excited to help make autonomous commerce safer and more practical for customers under one consistent set of controls.”

“As AI agents begin to play a larger role in digital commerce, the payments infrastructure must evolve to support the enterprise merchants driving this economy,” said Matthieu Barral, global head of Partnerships at Checkout.com. “We're working with Mastercard to define how programmable, agent-driven payments operate in practice — combining our processing capabilities with their secure network to give businesses the precise control and flexibility required to thrive in this next chapter of commerce.”

"The internet was built for human interactions, but the infrastructure of the future must be built for autonomous ones,” said Stephanie Cohen, chief strategy officer at Cloudflare. “Cloudflare has already become the premier environment to build and secure AI agents; now, those agents need a trusted way to independently pay for the resources they consume. By partnering with Mastercard on Agent Pay for Machines, we are connecting our industry-leading developer and security platform with world-class payments infrastructure to power the next era of machine-to-machine commerce."

“AI agents are creating entirely new forms of commerce that require payments to move at machine speed,” said Nina Coughlin, head of Stablecoin Business Development at Coinbase. “We’re excited to work alongside Mastercard to help advance an open and interoperable framework for agentic payments, combining trusted payment networks with programmable digital dollars and open standards like x402 to enable secure, scalable commerce between agents, businesses, and developers worldwide.”

“Coinflow has spent years making instant payments frictionless by bridging stablecoin infrastructure with traditional payment networks,” said Ben Meeder chief technology officer at Coinflow. “Now we’re thrilled to partner with Mastercard to bring that same simplicity to agentic commerce, enabling businesses to accept payments from AI agents as effortlessly as they do from humans.”

"The barrier to agentic commerce is no longer capability, it's trust: knowing an agent is authorized to act, that it stays within its limits and that every payment is accountable,” said Alfonso Gomez Jordana, co-founder of Crossmint. “Mastercard solves this, extending the risk, fraud and compliance infrastructure of its network to machine payments. Crossmint is excited to serve as the PSP of the agent in this trusted network.”

“Machine-to-machine payments represent the next frontier of commerce, where trust, speed and intelligence converge at the transaction layer,” said Bruno Oliveira Da Silva, global head of Getnet Data and AI Products at Getnet by Santander. “At Getnet, we believe the future belongs to acquirers who can enable autonomous commerce at scale, and our partnership with Mastercard puts us at the center of that transformation, from Latin America to Europe and beyond.”

“As programmatic, machine-led commerce emerges, where agents pay for compute and other resources, getting the payment layer right is essential,” said Cindy Turner, chief product officer at Global Payments. “Open collaboration across the ecosystem will be key. We are proud to partner with Mastercard on Agent Pay for Machines to help deliver trusted, interoperable infrastructure that can scale with our customers’ needs.”

"As commerce shifts from clicks to continuous machine-speed transactions, merchants need payment infrastructure that keeps up, without giving up control,” said Maria Parpou, executive vice president, Mastercard Merchant Cloud. “Through Mastercard Merchant Cloud, we're connecting merchants to Agent Pay for Machines so they can confidently accept and orchestrate agent-driven payments, backed by the trust, governance and multi-rail reach of Mastercard's global network."

“Machine payments underpin the business model of AI agents: metered pricing. Before an agent’s labor is metered, authorized, and settled with real trust, it needs the ability to pay and get paid,” Don Gossen, co-founder and CEO, Nevermined. “We are proud to partner with Mastercard to build the Commerce Logic Layer, which lets AI agents transact with other agents and agentic services.”

"OKX moves billions in settlement daily across some of the most complex, high-velocity markets in the world. We're executing a bold vision laid out by our Founder and CEO, Star Xu, having already built our Agentic Wallet and Agent Payments Protocol to handle exactly this kind of autonomous, machine-speed commerce,” said Haider Rafique, global managing partner at OKX. “Partnering with Mastercard to bring that infrastructure to scale globally is where this was always heading. We're ready for it."

“AI agents are becoming economic participants, and machine-to-machine payments are a critical building block for that future,” said Johnathan McGowan, CEO of PayOS. “We believe agents will become embedded across every experience. As that happens, they’ll need a trusted way to participate in the economy at machine speed. We’re proud to partner with Mastercard on this initiative to build the infrastructure needed to make that possible.”

"Polygon Labs is building the infrastructure for programmable payments and agent-driven commerce at global scale, with the Open Money Stack helping make digital financial services more accessible and interoperable,” said Aishwary Gupta, global head of business at Polygon. “Mastercard's exploration of machine payments underscores how blockchain and traditional payment networks can work together to unlock new consumer and business experiences while accelerating the evolution of the digital payments ecosystem."

"Payments made by machines look very different from payments made by people, happening far more often and at far smaller amounts than today's systems were designed for. Change at this scale needs creative answers from more than one company, because the future of payments cannot run through a single closed ecosystem,” said Farooq Malik, co-founder and CEO of Rain. “Rain is excited to build on our Mastercard principal membership and partner on Agent Pay for Machines as we expand to support the agentic future."

"Autonomous agents are already settling invoices and paying for compute on their own, but institutions can only move at that speed if the controls move with them,” said Markus Infanger, senior vice president of RippleX. “XRPL and RLUSD are built so enterprises can let agents transact at machine speed within rules the chain itself enforces, with settlement in seconds, predictable costs, programmable compliance, and a full audit trail, so agents can only ever do what they are authorized to do. Mastercard's move toward regulated stablecoin settlement on-chain is an important signal that this is evolving from an emerging capability into an enterprise standard."

“Most agent projects stall before production, because the infrastructure was never built for them,” said Ilan Zerbib, founder and CEO of Sapiom. “Payment rails designed for humans cannot authorize an agent. Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines closes that gap at the settlement layer. Sapiom handles runtime, execution and access to the machine economy. Together they enable agents to act, transact and complete work in production without months of bespoke infrastructure.”

"Trust enables machine payments at scale and we're excited to partner with Mastercard so verified agents can transact anywhere,” said Ankit Agarwal, chief technology officer at Skyfire.

"Right now, there is an opportunity to define how AI agents will seamlessly pay for the goods and services they need,” said Rishin Sharma, head of AI Growth, Solana Foundation. “The infrastructure powering these transactions will need to operate across stablecoins, card networks, and other payment rails. Solana is built to enable these types of solutions at scale, and we’re excited to work alongside Mastercard."

“Agentic commerce needs payment infrastructure that can support autonomous execution and reliable settlement. Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines is a meaningful step in that direction, connecting agent-initiated payments to global infrastructure built for real-world scale,” said Chandler Fang, co-founder of t54 Labs. “By partnering with Mastercard, t54 brings its trust layer to Machine Payments, adding real-time transaction-level risk assessment, Know Your Agent verification and traceability across the payment lifecycle. This helps create a clear evidence layer for agent authorization, chargebacks, dispute resolution, and liability review, making agent-led payments more secure, auditable and accountable.”

"Agentic commerce needs open standards at the protocol layer and open settlement rails underneath,” said Dan Romero, go-to-market at Tempo. “We're excited to work with Mastercard on Machine Payments Protocol compatibility, with Tempo providing stablecoin settlement for agent-driven payments at scale.”

"We're entering an era where AI agents are becoming economic actors, making purchases and moving value without any human in the loop,” said Bryce Ferguson, Co-Founder & CEO, Turnkey. “Machine-to-machine payments only work if agent actions are secure, auditable, and policy-controlled. Mastercard's agentic commerce initiative is building the common framework the industry needs to make that possible, and Turnkey is excited to provide the secure wallet infrastructure that enables trusted, programmable transactions at scale."

"The next phase of payments will be increasingly programmable, automated and embedded into how machines and businesses interact,” said Bentzi Rabi, co-founder and CEO of Utila. “We are excited to work with Mastercard to help provide the secure stablecoin and digital asset infrastructure needed to make these flows fast, governed and scalable.”

About Mastercard

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re building a resilient economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

www.mastercard.com

By PYMNTS  |  June 10, 2026

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Mastercard has launched a service that enables a new class of payments by allowing artificial intelligence agents to complete transactions among themselves.

The new Agent Pay for Machines builds on Mastercard’s Agent Pay program by adding capabilities for high-frequency, low-latency, low-value payments executed by agents and machines, the company said in a Wednesday (June 10) press release.

This infrastructure can handle payments that are continuous, embedded, permissioned and executed at machine speed, and it can support credentialing, controls and guaranteed settlement across cards, stablecoins and other payment types, according to the release.

Its capabilities could be used, for example, by a merchant’s AI agent to launch a store’s web presence by buying a domain name, a hosting service, images and checkout pages, per the release.

“Agent Pay for Machines will create the conditions for a superbloom of AI business models,” Mastercard Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert said in the release. “Machine payments can make it possible for services to be bought and sold among agents at fundamentally different scales than payments today — very high volumes, very small values, very fast and at extremely low latency.”

Mastercard is collaborating with more than 30 initial partners to scale an open ecosystem for Agent Pay forMachines by validating priority use cases, establishing common rules and accelerating adoption across industries, per the release.

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Karan Katyal, head of agentic commerce at Adyen, which is one of the initial partners, said in the release that infrastructure decisions made now will determine how the machine-to-machine payments space develops.

“Building these foundations with partners like Mastercard, openly and with merchant outcomes at the center, is how we ensure this next era of commerce works for everyone in the ecosystem,” Katyal said.

Mastercard’s launch of Agent Pay for Machines follows the company’s April 2025 introduction of Agent Pay. The company said at the time that Agent Pay is an agentic AI-driven payments program designed to help unlock an agentic commerce future by, for example, integrating payments experiences into generative AI-powered conversational platforms.

In March, Mastercard introduced Verifiable Intent, an open-source, standards-based framework designed for agentic commerce. The company said Verifiable Intent is designed to link a consumer’s identity, their specific instructions and the outcome of a transaction into a single, tamper-resistant record, creating a cryptographic audit trail that all parties can consult if a dispute arises.

MasterCard (MA - Free Report) has been one of the most searched-for stocks on Zacks.com lately. So, you might want to look at some of the facts that could shape the stock's performance in the near term.

Shares of this processor of debit and credit card payments have returned -0.3% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's -1.6% change. The Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry, to which MasterCard belongs, has lost 1.3% over this period. Now the key question is: Where could the stock be headed in the near term?

Although media reports or rumors about a significant change in a company's business prospects usually cause its stock to trend and lead to an immediate price change, there are always certain fundamental factors that ultimately drive the buy-and-hold decision.

Earnings Estimate RevisionsRather than focusing on anything else, we at Zacks prioritize evaluating the change in a company's earnings projection. This is because we believe the fair value for its stock is determined by the present value of its future stream of earnings.

Our analysis is essentially based on how sell-side analysts covering the stock are revising their earnings estimates to take the latest business trends into account. When earnings estimates for a company go up, the fair value for its stock goes up as well. And when a stock's fair value is higher than its current market price, investors tend to buy the stock, resulting in its price moving upward. Because of this, empirical studies indicate a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and short-term stock price movements.

For the current quarter, MasterCard is expected to post earnings of $4.76 per share, indicating a change of +14.7% from the year-ago quarter. The Zacks Consensus Estimate has changed -0.1% over the last 30 days.

The consensus earnings estimate of $19.6 for the current fiscal year indicates a year-over-year change of +15.2%. This estimate has changed +0.1% over the last 30 days.

For the next fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $22.65 indicates a change of +15.6% from what MasterCard is expected to report a year ago. Over the past month, the estimate has remained unchanged.

Having a strong externally audited track record, our proprietary stock rating tool, the Zacks Rank, offers a more conclusive picture of a stock's price direction in the near term, since it effectively harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions. Due to the size of the recent change in the consensus estimate, along with three other factors related to earnings estimates, MasterCard is rated Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

The chart below shows the evolution of the company's forward 12-month consensus EPS estimate:

12 Month EPS

Projected Revenue GrowthEven though a company's earnings growth is arguably the best indicator of its financial health, nothing much happens if it cannot raise its revenues. It's almost impossible for a company to grow its earnings without growing its revenue for long periods. Therefore, knowing a company's potential revenue growth is crucial.

In the case of MasterCard, the consensus sales estimate of $9.06 billion for the current quarter points to a year-over-year change of +11.4%. The $36.99 billion and $41.62 billion estimates for the current and next fiscal years indicate changes of +12.8% and +12.5%, respectively.

Last Reported Results and Surprise HistoryMasterCard reported revenues of $8.4 billion in the last reported quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +15.8%. EPS of $4.6 for the same period compares with $3.73 a year ago.

Compared to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $8.29 billion, the reported revenues represent a surprise of +1.26%. The EPS surprise was +4.55%.

The company beat consensus EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters. The company topped consensus revenue estimates each time over this period.

ValuationNo investment decision can be efficient without considering a stock's valuation. Whether a stock's current price rightly reflects the intrinsic value of the underlying business and the company's growth prospects is an essential determinant of its future price performance.

Comparing the current value of a company's valuation multiples, such as its price-to-earnings (P/E), price-to-sales (P/S), and price-to-cash flow (P/CF), to its own historical values helps ascertain whether its stock is fairly valued, overvalued, or undervalued, whereas comparing the company relative to its peers on these parameters gives a good sense of how reasonable its stock price is.

As part of the Zacks Style Scores system, the Zacks Value Style Score (which evaluates both traditional and unconventional valuation metrics) organizes stocks into five groups ranging from A to F (A is better than B; B is better than C; and so on), making it helpful in identifying whether a stock is overvalued, rightly valued, or temporarily undervalued.

MasterCard is graded D on this front, indicating that it is trading at a premium to its peers. Click here to see the values of some of the valuation metrics that have driven this grade.

Bottom LineThe facts discussed here and much other information on Zacks.com might help determine whether or not it's worthwhile paying attention to the market buzz about MasterCard. However, its Zacks Rank #3 does suggest that it may perform in line with the broader market in the near term.

Key Takeaways Mastercard launched AP4M to support secure machine-to-machine payments by AI agents.MA's platform uses Verifiable Intent, spending controls and multi-rail settlement options.Human-granted AI permissions will initially be recorded on the Polygon blockchain. Mastercard Incorporated (MA - Free Report) is expanding its push into AI-powered commerce with the launch of Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), a payment service designed to support transactions executed by AI agents and machines. More than 30 industry participants are supporting the adoption of the platform. Designed for the emerging machine-to-machine economy, the service enables AI agents to securely execute automated transactions and interact with other services on behalf of businesses.

AP4M builds on Mastercard's Agent Pay program launched in 2025. The platform credentials AI agents through a new Verifiable Intent framework, enforces spending controls and authorization rules, and supports settlement through cards, bank accounts and stablecoins. To enhance transparency, human-granted permissions for AI agents will initially be recorded on the Polygon blockchain.

Mastercard envisions a future where AI agents buy and sell services on behalf of businesses, transacting continuously at machine speed. These agents could execute chains of transactions, including microtransactions worth fractions of a cent. AI agents are evolving beyond decision-support tools and can increasingly coordinate services and complete transactions automatically. As payments become more embedded and automated, infrastructure capable of handling large volumes of low-value transactions will become increasingly important.

The launch underscores Mastercard's efforts to prepare its network for growing automated payment activity. By enabling transactions across multiple payment rails, the company is positioning itself to capitalize on the increasing adoption of AI-powered commerce and machine-driven transactions. As AI-driven transactions increase, the platform could help Mastercard expand the reach of its network into new payment flows.

How Are Competitors Faring?Some of MA’s competitors in the payments space like Visa Inc. (V - Free Report) and PayPal Holdings, Inc. (PYPL - Free Report) are also advancing their AI-commerce capabilities.

Visa recently expanded its Visa Intelligent Commerce initiative, enabling AI agents to securely shop and complete purchases on behalf of consumers using tokenized credentials, spending controls and authentication tools. Visa has also partnered with OpenAI to integrate Visa's payment capabilities into ChatGPT-powered shopping experiences.

PayPal launched Agentic Commerce Services, a suite of agent-enabled payment, catalog and order-management tools that enables AI agents to discover products, facilitate checkout and complete purchases across merchant networks. The offering is designed to help merchants participate in AI-driven shopping experiences while leveraging PayPal's payment infrastructure.

Mastercard’s Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesOver the past year, MA’s shares have lost 17% compared with the industry’s decline of 26.7%.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

From a valuation standpoint, MA trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 23.34, above the industry average of 15.91. MA carries a Value Score of D.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Mastercard’s 2026 earnings implies 15.2% growth from the year-ago period’s level.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Mastercard currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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Stock to Watch: MasterCard (MA - Free Report) Founded in 1966 and headquartered in Purchase, NY, Mastercard Inc. is a leading global payment solutions company that provides an array of services in support of credit, debit, mobile, web-based and contactless payments, and other related electronic payment programs to financial institutions and other entities.

MA is a #3 (Hold) on the Zacks Rank, with a VGM Score of B.

Additionally, the company could be a top pick for growth investors. MA has a Growth Style Score of B, forecasting year-over-year earnings growth of 15.2% for the current fiscal year.

12 analysts revised their earnings estimate upwards in the last 60 days for fiscal 2026. The Zacks Consensus Estimate has increased $0.09 to $19.60 per share. MA boasts an average earnings surprise of +5.5%.

With a solid Zacks Rank and top-tier Growth and VGM Style Scores, MA should be on investors' short list.

Visa (V - Free Report) is one of the stocks most watched by Zacks.com visitors lately. So, it might be a good idea to review some of the factors that might affect the near-term performance of the stock.

Over the past month, shares of this global payments processor have returned -1.3%, compared to the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +0.2% change. During this period, the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry, which Visa falls in, has lost 1.8%. The key question now is: What could be the stock's future direction?

While media releases or rumors about a substantial change in a company's business prospects usually make its stock 'trending' and lead to an immediate price change, there are always some fundamental facts that eventually dominate the buy-and-hold decision-making.

Earnings Estimate RevisionsRather than focusing on anything else, we at Zacks prioritize evaluating the change in a company's earnings projection. This is because we believe the fair value for its stock is determined by the present value of its future stream of earnings.

Our analysis is essentially based on how sell-side analysts covering the stock are revising their earnings estimates to take the latest business trends into account. When earnings estimates for a company go up, the fair value for its stock goes up as well. And when a stock's fair value is higher than its current market price, investors tend to buy the stock, resulting in its price moving upward. Because of this, empirical studies indicate a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and short-term stock price movements.

Visa is expected to post earnings of $3.21 per share for the current quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +7.7%. Over the last 30 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate remained unchanged.

For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $13.09 points to a change of +14.1% from the prior year. Over the last 30 days, this estimate has changed +0.1%.

For the next fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $14.81 indicates a change of +13.1% from what Visa is expected to report a year ago. Over the past month, the estimate has changed +0.1%.

With an impressive externally audited track record, our proprietary stock rating tool -- the Zacks Rank -- is a more conclusive indicator of a stock's near-term price performance, as it effectively harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions. The size of the recent change in the consensus estimate, along with three other factors related to earnings estimates, has resulted in a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) for Visa.

The chart below shows the evolution of the company's forward 12-month consensus EPS estimate:

12 Month EPS

Projected Revenue GrowthWhile earnings growth is arguably the most superior indicator of a company's financial health, nothing happens as such if a business isn't able to grow its revenues. After all, it's nearly impossible for a company to increase its earnings for an extended period without increasing its revenues. So, it's important to know a company's potential revenue growth.

For Visa, the consensus sales estimate for the current quarter of $11.35 billion indicates a year-over-year change of +11.6%. For the current and next fiscal years, $45.35 billion and $50.04 billion estimates indicate +13.4% and +10.3% changes, respectively.

Last Reported Results and Surprise HistoryVisa reported revenues of $11.23 billion in the last reported quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +17.1%. EPS of $3.31 for the same period compares with $2.76 a year ago.

Compared to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $10.69 billion, the reported revenues represent a surprise of +5.03%. The EPS surprise was +7.12%.

The company beat consensus EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters. The company topped consensus revenue estimates each time over this period.

ValuationWithout considering a stock's valuation, no investment decision can be efficient. In predicting a stock's future price performance, it's crucial to determine whether its current price correctly reflects the intrinsic value of the underlying business and the company's growth prospects.

Comparing the current value of a company's valuation multiples, such as its price-to-earnings (P/E), price-to-sales (P/S), and price-to-cash flow (P/CF), to its own historical values helps ascertain whether its stock is fairly valued, overvalued, or undervalued, whereas comparing the company relative to its peers on these parameters gives a good sense of how reasonable its stock price is.

The Zacks Value Style Score (part of the Zacks Style Scores system), which pays close attention to both traditional and unconventional valuation metrics to grade stocks from A to F (an A is better than a B; a B is better than a C; and so on), is pretty helpful in identifying whether a stock is overvalued, rightly valued, or temporarily undervalued.

Visa is graded D on this front, indicating that it is trading at a premium to its peers. Click here to see the values of some of the valuation metrics that have driven this grade.

ConclusionThe facts discussed here and much other information on Zacks.com might help determine whether or not it's worthwhile paying attention to the market buzz about Visa. However, its Zacks Rank #2 does suggest that it may outperform the broader market in the near term.

SummaryCompaniesJudge calls revised settlement fair, reasonable and adequateSettlement cuts swipe fees for five years, ends 'Honor All Cards' ruleOpponents said cost of accepting popular rewards cards still too highNEW YORK, June 10 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge granted preliminary approval to Visa's (V.N), opens new tab and Mastercard's (MA.N), opens new tab revised $38 billion settlement with merchants who accused the card networks of ‌charging too much to process payments on their credit cards.

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn, New York, said the settlement covering more than 12 million merchants was "fair, reasonable, and adequate," and that he was likely to eventually grant final approval.

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Cogan ruled on Tuesday, nearly two years after a different judge rejected a proposed $30 billion settlement as too small. Some groups including the National Retail Federation, the world's ​largest retail trade group, also opposed the new settlement and plan further challenges.

The settlement announced in November was intended to end litigation that began in ​2005, when merchants accused Visa, Mastercard and banks of conspiring to violate U.S. antitrust laws, including through the collection of "swipe ⁠fees, opens new tab."

SWIPE FEES WOULD BE CUTAlso known as interchange fees, swipe fees totaled $118.8 billion, opens new tab for Visa and Mastercard in the United States in 2025, up from $111.2 billion in ​2024 and $25.6 billion in 2009, the Merchants Payments Coalition said. The average fee was 2.36%.

Visa and Mastercard agreed to lower swipe fees by 0.1 percentage point ​for five years, while standard consumer rates would be lowered to no more than 1.25% for eight years.

Merchants could also choose whether to accept cards in distinct categories: commercial cards, premium consumer cards — including the popular rewards cards that dominate the card market — and standard consumer cards.

That provision would effectively end the longstanding "Honor All Cards" rule requiring merchants to accept all Visa ​and Mastercard cards or none. Merchants also got more options to impose surcharges on customers.

Visa shares rose 1.7% on Tuesday while Mastercard shares rose 2%.

MORE OBJECTIONS PREDICTEDIn ​separate statements, the National Retail Federation and the National Association of Convenience Stores said the revised settlement failed to address a "broken" credit card market, and NACS General Counsel Doug ‌Kantor predicted "many ⁠more objections" will be filed.

Objectors said merchants would still pay too much to accept rewards cards and be required to "honor all issuers" in a given network, meaning they could not accept one bank's cards and reject another's.

Cogan said many objections had merit, but the settlement didn't need to be perfect.

"The objectors identify several things that they want to do but can’t (e.g., rejecting cards at the issuer-level, surcharging at the issuer-level) and that they theoretically can do but won’t (e.g., rejecting premium cards)," he ​said. "But the question is not whether ​the amended settlement constitutes the best ⁠possible recovery, end stop – it’s whether the amended settlement constitutes the best possible recovery in light of what can be gained and lost through trial."

Other objectors included Walmart (WMT.O), opens new tab and the Merchants Payments Coalition. Neither immediately commented.

NOBEL ECONOMIST SAYS CONSUMERS COULD BENEFITThe ​card networks welcomed Cogan's decision.

Visa said the settlement gives merchants more flexibility in accepting payments, while Mastercard said the ​accord "balances the interests ⁠of all parties."

Supporters of the settlement included the Electronic Payments Coalition, whose members include the card networks and large issuers such as Bank of America (BAC.N), opens new tab, Capital One (COF.N), opens new tab, Chase (JPM.N), opens new tab and Citibank (C.N), opens new tab.

Two experts hired by the plaintiffs, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and University of Washington professor Keith Leffler, said the changes could save merchants $38 billion by 2031 ⁠and provide $224 billion ​of benefits overall, including to consumers.

The $30 billion settlement would have lowered swipe fees by 0.07 ​percentage point over five years and also allowed more surcharges.

In rejecting that accord in June 2024, U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie said fees would have still been above where they were absent any ​antitrust violations, and merchants would remain stuck with the "Honor All Cards" rule.

Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York. Editing by Aurora Ellis, Bill Berkrot and Mark Potter

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Key Takeaways Visa partnered with OpenWay to help Asia Pacific institutions roll out payment products faster.OpenWay's Way4 platform enables quicker integration of selected Visa payment capabilities.Way4 supports cards, wallets and real-time payments, with more Visa solutions planned. Visa Inc. (V - Free Report) is expanding its role in the digital payments ecosystem through a new collaboration with OpenWay. The partnership is designed to help banks, processors and fintechs across the Asia Pacific introduce new payment offerings more efficiently by leveraging OpenWay’s Way4 platform. As financial institutions face increasing pressure to modernize customer experiences, the collaboration aims to reduce implementation complexity and speed up the rollout of innovative payment products.

The initiative allows selected Visa payment capabilities to be integrated more quickly into OpenWay’s Way4 platform through earlier alignment on product requirements and implementation frameworks. By streamlining deployment processes, the collaboration can help financial institutions shorten development cycles and bring new services to market faster.

Way4 serves as a unified platform supporting card issuance, digital wallets, merchant acquiring, real-time payments and other financial services. Its ability to operate across on-premise, cloud, SaaS and hybrid environments provides institutions with deployment flexibility while maintaining operational reliability. The platform’s broad functionality makes it a useful foundation for banks seeking to expand digital payment capabilities and adapt to evolving customer expectations.

For V, the collaboration strengthens its strategy of embedding its payment technologies deeper into the financial services ecosystem. The framework already supports initiatives such as Visa Flexible Credential and Visa Fleet 2.0, with additional Visa solutions expected to be added over time. While the announcement may not immediately impact financial results, it reinforces Visa’s long-term efforts to drive payment innovation and expand the reach of its network across global markets.

How Are Competitors Faring?Some of V’s competitors in the payments space include Mastercard Incorporated (MA - Free Report) and PayPal Holdings, Inc. (PYPL - Free Report) .

Mastercard continues to expand its payment infrastructure through partnerships that connect banks, fintechs and merchants to its network. MA is investing heavily in open banking, real-time payments and cross-border capabilities, helping financial institutions launch digital payment solutions faster and reach customers more efficiently.

PayPal remains focused on broadening its payment ecosystem through wallet innovations, merchant services and seamless checkout solutions. PYPL is integrating new technologies and partnerships to support faster digital transactions, improve customer engagement and help businesses adapt to evolving payment preferences globally.

Visa’s Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesOver the past year, shares of Visa have declined 12.3% compared with the industry’s 27.9% fall.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

From a valuation standpoint, V trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 22.76, above the industry average of 15.65. V carries a Value Score of D.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Visa’s fiscal 2026 earnings implies a 14.1% jump from the year-ago period.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Visa stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

New Agent Scoring, Agentic Registry and Large Transaction Model capabilities, stablecoin settlement and token enhancements support the next gen of digital commerce

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--At Visa Payments Forum 2026, Visa (NYSE: V) today announced new AI, stablecoin and token capabilities designed to help clients unlock the next generation of commerce. These innovations reflect a simple objective: ensuring trust, security and control evolve alongside increasingly fast, automated and intelligent commerce experiences.

In a keynote presentation, Jack Forestell, Chief Product & Strategy Officer at Visa, outlined how two foundational shifts—artificial intelligence and stablecoins—are transforming both the front end and back end of money movement, and how Visa is enabling clients to participate.

“AI is transforming the front end of commerce. Stablecoins are reshaping the back end,” said Forestell. “Visa’s role is to enable it to work securely, reliably and at global scale, for every participant in the ecosystem.”

Powering the Front End of Commerce—and How It Gets Built—with AI

Visa detailed how AI is reshaping how transactions are initiated, authorized and trusted—while also accelerating how new commerce experiences are designed, developed and delivered, particularly as AI agents increasingly act on behalf of consumers and businesses.

Visa Intelligent Commerce, the company’s platform for agentic commerce, provides the trust, controls and connectivity needed for AI agents to securely discover, initiate and complete transactions.

To support this shift, Visa is working across the ecosystem—partnering with leading AI platforms, enabling new merchant capabilities and building infrastructure to ensure agent-initiated transactions are transparent and trusted, including:

Agent Score: Created with New Generation, it allows merchants to evaluate their websites for agentic commerce readiness—specifically, whether AI agents can navigate, understand and complete tasks on a merchant’s website. Agentic Directory: Merchants need to know which agents can be trusted to transact on their sites, and agents need confidence that they are interacting with legitimate merchants. The directory includes agents and merchants that Visa has verified as legitimate participants in agentic commerce. OpenAI Partnership: a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to enable secure Visa payments within agentic commerce, enabling seamless and trusted payments across OpenAI. Through the partnership, Visa will provide its global network, credentialing capabilities and security infrastructure to support agentic commerce experiences, helping consumers and businesses interact and transact with confidence. Large Transaction Model: An AI model trained on billions of transactions to improve fraud detection while increasing authorization performance and reducing false declines—a trade-off the industry has struggled with for years. Visa also demonstrated early development concepts from its Crypto Labs and developer teams. This included a Command Line Interface proof of concept that lets AI agents pay for digital services directly in the terminal using Visa’s tokenized credentials.

“We believe a growing share of creation and transactions will be led by developers using AI tools,” said Forestell. “We are working with the industry to make cards the best way to pay in the Command Line.”

Enhancing Tokens for AI-Driven Commerce

Visa announced significant enhancements to its tokens, focused on bringing more data, context and assurance into the credentials used in digital commerce.

Today, tokens already carry a highly secure data set purpose-built for digital payments. As commerce extends to new channels and agents, Visa is enriching the data to provide more details on the transaction type, where the token is being used and who is making the payment.

A second key advancement is a token assurance signal. Token use is evaluated throughout its lifecycle—based on provisioning and behavioral history—to generate a signal of trust behind each transaction.

These enhancements provide issuers with stronger signals for authorization decisions, helping reduce false declines for merchants while minimizing friction for consumers.

Designed for AI-driven commerce, these developments embed identity, permissions and behavioral signals more deeply into credentials—allowing trust to travel with the transaction across devices, channels and use cases, including those initiated autonomously by AI agents.

Modernizing the Back End of Money Movement with Stablecoins

Visa also shared progress in modernizing settlement and value transfer through stablecoins and blockchain-based infrastructure.

Tokenized Deposits: Visa announced it will build the technology layer that can allow banks to turn traditional deposits into programmable, always-on digital money. This gives banks a way to match the speed and flexibility of stablecoins while keeping funds on balance sheet. Stablecoin Settlement: Visa is expanding stablecoin settlement pilots across multiple regions, blockchains and currencies. Building on its first stablecoin settlement pilots in early 2025, Visa has moved billions of dollars in stablecoins across VisaNet, with an annualized run rate of approximately $7 billion as of March 2026. With issuing banks already settling seven days a week onchain with Visa, Visa is also working to extend seven-day settlement to include acquirers, increasing flexibility and frequency across the entire ecosystem. Stablecoin-Linked Cards: Visa continues to expand stablecoin-linked card programs, enabling consumers and businesses to spend stablecoin balances anywhere Visa is accepted. With more than 160 programs live or in development globally, adoption is expected to accelerate. Helping Clients Modernize Without Disruption

Across these innovations, Visa emphasized a consistent theme from clients: modernization is essential, but full system replacement is not practical. Visa is addressing this with modular, cloud-native capabilities that integrate with existing infrastructure and enable banks, fintechs, acquirers and merchants to modernize at their own pace.

For issuers, the Pismo core banking platform enables flexible, real-time banking and processing capabilities with a phased path away from traditional systems. For acquirers and merchants, Unified Checkout provides a consistent way to accept both card and non-card payments through a single orchestration layer—supporting evolving commerce models, including AI-driven transactions. Visa Intelligent Authorization uses real-time network signals and advanced models to help acquirers and their merchants optimize authorization approvals and capture incremental spend that might otherwise be declined. Leading the Evolution of Commerce

Taken together, the announcements at Visa Payments Forum reflect a clear vision: Visa is becoming the platform that connects AI, programmable money, modern infrastructure and global trust so clients can win now and be ready for what’s next.

“History is filled with innovations that never reached scale,” said Forestell. “What determines success is trust, security and global reach. That’s what Visa brings to every new era of commerce – and what we’re building for the future.”

About Visa

Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.

More News From Visa Inc.

Visa (NYSE: V) today announced a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to enable secure Visa payments within agentic commerce, enabling seamless and trusted payments across OpenAI. The companies made the announcement at the Visa Payments Forum in San Francisco. Through the partnership, Visa will provide its global network, credentialing capabilities and security infrastructure to support agentic commerce experiences, helping consumers and businesses interact and transact with confidence.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260610422687/en/

The collaboration is part of the broader Visa Intelligent Commerce initiative, which is focused on extending secure payment capabilities into new digital environments. Together, Visa and OpenAI will also explore a range of enterprise applications, including developer-focused experiences powered by Codex, as well as more automated and conversational workflows, as AI continues to evolve as an important interface for digital interactions.

As part of the partnership, Visa’s payment capabilities will be integrated into OpenAI experiences, giving developers and merchants a streamlined way to accept Visa payments initiated by agents. Alongside OpenAI, Visa will deliver the underlying network, tokenization and risk capabilities that support trusted and secure transactions.

Transactions will operate within clearly defined user permissions, policies and controls, such as spending limits, merchant categories or required approvals. Transactions will use tokenized Visa credentials and real-time authorization and fraud monitoring, helping enable new AI-enabled payment experiences to maintain strong security and consumer protection.

“AI will transform commerce more profoundly than the internet or mobile technology ever did,” said Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Visa. “As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa’s focus is to ensure transactions are trusted, secure and seamless. That’s the infrastructure we’re building with partners like OpenAI.”

“Commerce is going to happen in many more places and in many more ways than it does today, and agents will play an increasingly important role in helping people complete tasks that involve money—from purchases and payments to more complex transactions,” said Marco Mahrus, Head of Partnerships, Commerce at OpenAI. “By integrating with Visa Intelligent Commerce, we're building the infrastructure for secure, transparent, and user-controlled agentic transactions, helping people do more with AI agents while maintaining confidence that payments are being handled safely and securely.”

About Visa

Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260610422687/en/

Betting that people will soon grow more comfortable having artificial intelligence agents shop for groceries, plane tickets or diapers on their behalf, payments giant Visa said Wednesday that it has embedded its payment network inside of ChatGPT, empowering the chatbot to independently shop and complete transactions.

NYSE issues a pre-market daily advisory direct from the trading floor. NEW YORK, June 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) provides a daily pre-market update directly from the NYSE Trading Floor.

© Maja Hitij / Getty Images News via Getty Images

University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter, who runs the school’s IPO Initiative and is widely regarded as the dean of IPO research, told CNBC on June 11, 2026, that SpaceX’s pending offering will set a first-day underpricing record that dwarfs prior benchmarks held by Visa and Alibaba. “SpaceX is almost certainly going to blow them away,” Ritter said, referring to the pop between the IPO price and opening trade.

The Elon Musk-led rocket and satellite company is priced at a $1.75 trillion valuation, which works out to roughly 40 times estimated 2026 sales and 170 times EBITDA. The company expects to raise about $75 billion in fresh capital from the IPO. According to the SPCX ticker scheduled to begin trading on NASDAQ on June 12, 2026, the deal carries an unprecedented retail allocation that Ritter argues changes the math for individual investors.

The Records Ritter Says Will Fall Visa (NYSE:V | V Price Prediction) priced its March 2008 IPO at what was then the largest U.S. offering in history, raising roughly $17.9 billion. Since its debut, the payments network has returned 2,505.64% on a split-adjusted basis, with the stock at $318.78 as of June 10, 2026. SpaceX expects to raise about $75 billion from its upcoming IPO.

Visa’s most recent quarter showed why the post-IPO compounder narrative persists: Q1 FY2026 net revenue of $10.90 billion (up 14.6% year over year) and non-GAAP EPS of $3.17, with CEO Ryan McInerney highlighting “our Visa as a Service stack” positioning the company as a “payments hyperscaler.” The shares trade at a forward P/E of 21 with a price-to-sales ratio of 14.

Alibaba’s $25 Billion Bar Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) seized the global IPO record from Visa in September 2014 by raising roughly $25 billion. The retail tranche Ritter cites for SpaceX would match the entire size of Alibaba’s deal on its own.

Alibaba’s recent Q4 FY2026 revenue of $35.28 billion grew just 3% year over year, with adjusted EBITA falling 84% to $740 million as the company invested in AI. Cloud Intelligence Group external revenue accelerated to 40%, with CEO Eddie Wu telling investors that “AI-related products account for 30% of this revenue.” The stock trades at a price-to-sales ratio of 0.3.

Valuing SpaceX On Future Growth Ritter’s valuation lens aligns with how the market treats unprofitable AI leaders. “My main metric is price to sales. Given that this company, as well as the AI giants, currently aren’t profitable, they’re growing rapidly. But SpaceX is being valued not on the past, but what could be,” he said.

SpaceX’s S-1 backs the growth case. SpaceX reported 2025 consolidated revenue of $18,674 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $6,584 million, with Q1 2026 revenue of $4,694 million. The Connectivity segment (Starlink) generated Q1 2026 income from operations of $1,188 million, and Segment Adjusted EBITDA of $2,087 million, profitable enough to fund the loss-making Space and AI segments.

On unit economics, Ritter focused on the flywheel between cheaper launch and cheaper bandwidth: “They’ve already got an 80% market share with Starship. That’s likely to go to 100% due to the very low launch costs relative to the competition. But that’s not an enormous market. But the lower launch costs are going to allow Starlink satellites to be put up at lower cost, allowing Starlink internet access to be available at lower cost. They’re getting very good gross margins on that, and that could explode to be a much bigger business.”

That thesis is reinforced by the filing’s disclosure that 2025 Connectivity revenue grew $3,788 million, or 49.8%, with 99.9% growth in Starlink subscribers. The xAI segment acquired in February 2026 and orbital AI compute ambitions sit atop as speculative long-term optionality.

The Retail Warning The unprecedented allocation flips the usual IPO dynamic. “With the retail tranche, that’s going to be something like $25 billion of shares that retail investors are able to buy, which is bigger than the largest IPO in U.S. history by itself,” Ritter said. That access cuts both ways, given the multiples involved.

Even exceptional businesses can deliver disappointing returns if investors pay too much up front. Ritter’s reminder is worth keeping in mind as excitement builds: “A great company doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a great stock.”

Visa (V - Free Report) closed at $318.97 in the latest trading session, marking a -1.24% move from the prior day. This change lagged the S&P 500's 1.75% gain on the day. Meanwhile, the Dow experienced a rise of 1.86%, and the technology-dominated Nasdaq saw an increase of 2.54%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the global payments processor had gained 0.83% outpaced the Business Services sector's loss of 1.26% and the S&P 500's loss of 1.63%.

Market participants will be closely following the financial results of Visa in its upcoming release. The company is expected to report EPS of $3.21, up 7.72% from the prior-year quarter. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $11.35 billion, up 11.59% from the year-ago period.

V's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $13.09 per share and revenue of $45.35 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +14.12% and +13.37%, respectively.

Investors should also pay attention to any latest changes in analyst estimates for Visa. These revisions typically reflect the latest short-term business trends, which can change frequently. Therefore, positive revisions in estimates convey analysts' confidence in the business performance and profit potential.

Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. To capitalize on this, we've crafted the Zacks Rank, a unique model that incorporates these estimate changes and offers a practical rating system.

The Zacks Rank system, running from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), holds an admirable track record of superior performance, independently audited, with #1 stocks contributing an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.12% higher. Visa is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).

From a valuation perspective, Visa is currently exchanging hands at a Forward P/E ratio of 24.66. This represents a premium compared to its industry average Forward P/E of 8.91.

It's also important to note that V currently trades at a PEG ratio of 1.73. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. As of the close of trade yesterday, the Financial Transaction Services industry held an average PEG ratio of 0.74.

The Financial Transaction Services industry is part of the Business Services sector. This industry, currently bearing a Zacks Industry Rank of 67, finds itself in the top 28% echelons of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank evaluates the power of our distinct industry groups by determining the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks forming the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

Make sure to utilize Zacks.com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions.

Bank of America Corporation (BAC) Presents at Morgan Stanley US Financials Conference 2026 Transcript

Key points

250+ corporate and financial institution leaders convene in Singapore as APAC payments market reaches ~US$18 trillion1 Bank of America held its annual Treasury Leaders Summit (TLS) and Financial Institutions (FI) Forum events in Singapore to discuss the role of AI-led platforms for treasury, trade and payments Now in their 15th year, the events continue to convene clients and market participants to address key industry issues , /PRNewswire/ -- Increasingly complex operating environment for trade and capital flows, elevated FX volatility and evolving liquidity risks are accelerating demand for AI-driven treasury, trade and currency solutions among Asia Pacific companies as they look to enhance resilience and performance.

Leadership team of Bank of America at the Treasury Leaders Summit event in Singapore, May 20 This was a key takeaway from Bank of America's annual flagship client events held in Singapore – TLS (May 20) and FI Forum (May 21), which brought together more than 250 senior treasury and financial institution leaders from top global corporates, banks, asset managers and insurers.

Bank of America, the second largest bank in the world by market capitalization, has been hosting the TLS and FI Forum events for over 15 years, bringing together clients, market participants and policy makers to address the most pressing trends shaping payments, liquidity and transaction banking.

With more than US$13 billion in annual technology spend, Bank of America remains at the forefront of innovation, delivering world class solutions such as CashPro® and Intelligent Receivables®. These platforms help clients achieve real-time cash visibility, streamline payments and liquidity management, and enhance reconciliation capabilities at scale.

Hosted by Winnie Chen, Head of Global Payments Solutions (GPS), Asia Pacific at Bank of America, alongside senior global and regional leaders, the TLS and FI Forum underscored the US lender's role as a trusted strategic partner, convening clients to exchange insights, accelerate innovation and drive tangible outcomes.

"In an environment defined by persistent volatility and structural shifts, clients are seeking insights that go beyond theory," said Winnie Chen. "There is a clear pivot toward data and AI-driven capabilities that can help clients strengthen resilience, sharpen decision-making and deliver measurable results."

The events were held at a time when the Asia Pacific payments market has reached an estimated US$18 trillion in transaction value, highlighting a significant opportunity to optimize treasury, payments and risk management strategies in an increasingly complex environment.

"Bank of America's global platform, combined with our AI-enabled capabilities, positions us strongly to deliver seamless solutions that help clients navigate complexity and unlock growth," Chen added.

Frequently asked questions

Question: Who organizes the TLS and FI Forum events?

Answer: Bank of America's Global Payments Solutions (GPS) team organizes the Treasury Leadership Summit (TLS) and Financial Institutions (FI) Forum across Asia Pacific, with Singapore hosting its flagship editions. The bank has convened these events for over 15 years, reinforcing its long-standing commitment to client engagement and industry leadership.

Question: What is the objective of these events?

Answer: The forums are designed to bring together senior leaders from corporates and financial institutions to exchange perspectives on navigating market complexity. They provide a platform for peer-level dialogue focused on strengthening resilience, advancing innovation and delivering tangible outcomes amid evolving macroeconomic conditions, technological transformation and shifting client expectations.

Question: What differentiates Bank of America's Global Payments Solutions from its peers?

Answer: Bank of America's Global Payments Solutions business differentiates itself through the combination of its global network, deep industry expertise and sustained investment in technology innovation. With more than US$13 billion in annual technology spend, the bank delivers AI-enabled platforms such as CashPro® and Intelligent Receivables that provide clients with real-time insights, integrated liquidity management and scalable solutions. This positions Bank of America to help clients navigate complexity, enhance efficiency and drive growth across markets.

Bank of America

Bank of America is one of the world's leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving nearly 70 million clients with approximately 3,500 retail financial centers, approximately 15,000 ATMs (automated teller machines) and award-winning digital banking with approximately 59 million verified digital users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. As the #1 small business lender in the United States (FDIC), Bank of America offers industry leading support to approximately 4 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

For more Bank of America news, including dividend announcements and other important information, visit the Bank of America newsroom and register for news email alerts.

Reporters may contact

Kaustubh Kulkarni, Bank of America
Phone: +65 6678.1677
[email protected]

1 Mordor Intelligence data

SOURCE Bank of America Corporation

The Bank of America (NYSE:BAC | BAC Price Prediction) checklist of pre-peak warning signs is flashing at 70%, matching the rough average reading seen at the last seven major stock market tops over the past 35 years. That figure, attributed to Bank of America Global Research in a checklist recreated by SSR and circulated on X by @ThierryBorgeat, lands one week before Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh takes the helm of his first Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on June 16-17.

For market participants, the 70% figure from Bank of America is loaded and shouldn’t be misread. The post is explicit that the checklist tells you where you are in the cycle, not when a top hits, and the markets can sit near a peak for months and keep climbing.

Still, the data points deserve your attention. The S&P 500, tracked by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY), sits at a level the post pegs around 7,580, up from 6,144 when the same checklist last read 70% in February 2025.

The Scary-Sounding Number Let’s start with the headline figure: 70%. That’s the share of Bank of America’s pre-peak warning indicators currently firing, per the May reading from Bank of America Global Research.

For historical context, the same Bank of America checklist printed 88% in July 1990, 90% in March 2000, 80% in October 2007, 60% in September 2018, 50% in February 2020, and 50% in January 2022. The average across those prior peaks comes to 70%, which is the exact level today (or more precisely, in May of 2026).

What It Means The signals Bank of America has currently flagged span sentiment, valuation, credit, and macro factors. The list includes elevated consumer confidence and bullish expectations, stretched long-term growth expectations, record merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, and extreme valuations on a combined price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio-plus-inflation basis.

Three more are firing on the credit and breadth side, per Bank of America: low-P/E-ratio stocks badly lagging high-P/E stocks, credit stress collapsed to complacent lows, and tightening lending conditions from the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS). The graphic also highlights the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence indicator, S&P 500 long-term growth expectations, and an inverted yield curve over the prior six months as items to watch.

The macro backdrop behind SPY’s run echoes the late-cycle framing. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment index sank to 49.8 in April, well below the 60 recessionary threshold, while Core PCE rose to 129.63 in April, sitting at the 90.9 percentile of the past 12 months.

The Market Reaction The SPY ETF closed at $737.05 on June 9, down from $759.57 on June 2 over the one-week window. Year to date, SPY moved from $681.92 on December 31, 2025 to $737.05 on June 9.

Today, the S&P 500 and the SPY ETF are down slightly after annualized Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose to 4.2% in May, marking the CPI’s highest level since 2023. The S&P 500 was down by less than half a percent on Wednesday morning, so perhaps the market was ready for a not-so-ideal CPI print.

In any case, volatility around the SPY trade is rising into the meeting. The CBOE Volatility Index or VIX settled at 18.92 on June 8, still in the normal 15-20 range but at the 72nd percentile of the past 12 months.

The Bear Case The setup is what worries Bank of America. Headline CPI accelerated to 4% year over year in May and core CPI rose to 3%, even as consumer sentiment collapsed into recessionary territory.

The Fed has already executed three cuts to 4%, but per the source, futures markets have shifted toward pricing possible rate hikes later in 2026 rather than cuts. That’s the opposite of what investors holding SPY at record levels want to hear.

Polymarket assigns a 99% probability of no rate change at the June 16-17 meeting. The market’s attention sits on Warsh’s first press conference as Fed Chair, where any hawkish phrasing can hit SPY valuations directly.

The 10-year/2-year Treasury spread, a classic late-cycle tell, sits at 0.4% as of June 9, down from 0.74% in early February. The curve hasn’t inverted, yet the compression aligns with the cycle phase Bank of America’s 70% reading describes.

The Bottom Line The 70% checklist reading from Bank of America isn’t a sell signal, and the source itself rules out market timing. The same checklist read 70% in February 2025 when the S&P 500 was at 6,144, and SPY climbed substantially from there. “Late” can last a long time.

What changes the picture this month is Warsh. The Federal Reserve’s June 16-17 FOMC meeting marks his first as Fed chair, and SPY holders should expect every sentence of his press conference to be parsed for the Fed’s direction on inflation, employment, and the path of interest rates.

For investors holding broad index exposure through SPY or similar vehicles, the message is calibration, not capitulation. Late-cycle conditions can argue for tighter risk discipline, attention to position sizing, and patience on adding fresh exposure until Warsh’s first meeting reframes the path forward.

Key Takeaways BAC plans a real-time cross-border payments solution through Swift and CashPro next quarter.BAC targets remittances, gig-worker payouts and e-commerce payments to drive recurring fees.BAC's platform adds tracking, full-principal delivery and local-currency settlement. Bank of America’s (BAC - Free Report) planned launch of a cross-border real-time payments solution next quarter is expected to support fee revenues over time by giving corporate and commercial clients a faster, more transparent way to move money across countries. By offering instant payments through Swift and CashPro, BAC can reduce delays and uncertainty in global transactions, encouraging more clients to route cross-border payment activity through the bank.

The opportunity is meaningful because BAC is targeting high-volume payment areas, such as remittances, gig-worker payouts and e-commerce marketplace payments. While these transactions are often smaller in value, they occur frequently. As volumes increase, transaction-related fees can build into a steady recurring revenue stream, making the product attractive from a long-term revenue perspective.

The launch is also expected to help BAC deepen relationships with corporate and institutional clients. Companies using CashPro for real-time global payments may also turn to the bank for treasury, cash-management, foreign-exchange and working-capital services. This will likely create cross-selling opportunities and improve client stickiness.

Features such as real-time tracking, full principal delivery and local-currency settlement will improve client experience. Businesses want certainty around when money is sent, when it arrives and how much the receiver gets. By reducing delays and improving transparency, BAC can make its payments platform more valuable.

Overall, as demand for faster and more reliable cross-border payments grows, the launch is expected to help Bank of America capture a larger share of global payment flows and gradually strengthen its fee-based revenue stream.

How Are BAC’s Peers Competing in This Space?Global transaction banking peers such as JPMorgan (JPM - Free Report) and Citigroup (C - Free Report) are also investing in faster cross-border payment capabilities.

JPMorgan is strengthening its real-time cross-border payments capabilities through its blockchain-based Kinexys Digital Payments platform, which enables institutional clients to move deposits with JPMorgan instantly, including across borders and outside normal banking hours.

By supporting 24/7/365 payments, real-time transaction visibility, liquidity movement and offshore USD clearing, Kinexys positions JPMorgan as a leading large-bank competitor in tokenized payments and real-time treasury solutions.

Citigroup, conversely, is advancing its real-time cross-border payments capabilities by integrating Citi Token Services with its 24/7 USD Clearing platform. The solution enables institutional clients to move funds near-instantly across Citigroup and non-Citigroup accounts, initially in the U.K. and the United States, with plans to expand to more markets.

Bank of America’s Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesIn the past six months, BAC shares have lost 1.1% against the industry’s 2.2% growth.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

From a valuation standpoint, Bank of America trades at a 12-month trailing price-to-tangible book (P/TB) of 1.96X, below the industry average of 3.24.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for BAC’s 2026 and 2027 earnings implies year-over-year growth of 16.8% and 14.2%, respectively. In the past week, earnings estimates for both years have been unchanged.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Bank of America currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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Walmart started testing delivery from Subway restaurants located within its stores this spring, Business Insider reported. Gerardo Mora/Getty Images for Subway Walmart is pushing into restaurant delivery. Its first goal: Getting you a sub sandwich on demand.

The big box retailer has been delivering meals from Subway restaurants located in Walmart stores for about a month, said Tracy Poulliot, vice president of e-commerce and marketing at Walmart. The retailer aims to have the delivery option live at all 1,400 Subways within Walmart stores by late July.

Business Insider first reported that Walmart was testing restaurant delivery.

Customers can place Subway orders for express delivery on their own using the Walmart app, the company said. In testing, though, many customers combined restaurant orders with groceries and last-minute items that they need into a single order, Poulliot said.

Walmart customers can use the retailer's app to place Subway orders.  Walmart "We're seeing a lot of customers purchase their Subway meals in addition to their groceries," she told reporters Thursday at the company's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Walmart has spent years building its delivery business. The big box retailer now offers delivery in hours — or minutes — on everything from bananas to garden hoses from its 4,600 stores in the US. It uses a mix of independent contractors who work through Walmart's Spark delivery app and store employees to pick orders and deliver them to customers' homes.

Subway has had locations within Walmart stores for about 20 years, Damien Harmon, president of Subway North America, said in a video shown during Thursday's presentation.

Harmon relayed the experience of one Subway franchisee that operates restaurants within several Walmart locations, who said the delivery option is "a new avenue for growth and gives us another way to meet our customers where they are."

Executives on Thursday left the door open to expanding Walmart's restaurant delivery.

It's considering an integration with Sparky, Walmart's AI shopping assistant, which would allow customers to place restaurant orders with a simple AI prompt, Poulliot said.

Other national restaurants, such as Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's, as well as regional chains such as California-based Wienerschnitzel, also have locations in some Walmart stores.

Walmart also sees a path to expand the delivery service to restaurants beyond its stores, said Greg Cathey, Walmart's senior vice president of digital fulfillment transformation.

"You can draw a circle around most Walmart stores, and almost all quick-service restaurant brands are located within five miles," he said.

Have a tip about Walmart or food delivery? Contact these reporters at [email protected] and [email protected]. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

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Dominick Reuter You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

Dominick Reuter is a senior retail reporter for Business Insider, primarily covering Walmart, Target, and Costco. His stories tend to focus on issues and trends that affect employees and customers.Prior to joining BI in 2019, Dominick worked for more than a decade as an independent photojournalist covering a wide range of stories for global wire services and newspapers, including Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and Agence France-Presse.Dominick studied photojournalism at Boston University and later earned a Masters in business and economics journalism from Columbia University.If you're an employee or customer with a story to share, please contact me via email or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750.

Alex Bitter You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

Alex Bitter is a senior retail reporter covering the gig economy, food, and retail. His work focuses major gig delivery and ride-hailing apps, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Walmart's Spark. He is interested in everything from what it's like to work on the apps to the companies' business strategies.Some of his recent stories feature gig workers who have been deactivated on the apps, DoorDash hiring traditional employees to make deliveries, gig workers' use of bots, and gig work expanding into new professions, such as nursing.Alex has also written about Aldi's US expansion, Starbucks' turnaround efforts, and the fallout from Kraft-Heinz's budget cutting. Convenience store chain Sheetz ended its "smile policy" after his reporting.Before joining Insider in September 2020, he wrote about consumer and retail companies for S&P Global Market Intelligence. He's a graduate of the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and grew up on the Big Island.Alex lives in the Washington, DC, area, where you can find him studying ancient coins or searching for Civil War artifacts with his metal detector in his free time.Got a tip? Reach out at [email protected] or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (808) 854-4501.

Walmart Delivery Fast Food More

Walmart WMT is moving deeper into fast delivery, adding Subway meals to its app as it looks to make restaurant orders part of the same experience as groceries and household essentials.

Starting this month, customers in select locations can order Subway through Walmart's app or website and get meals delivered in as little as 30 minutes. Orders can be placed on their own or added to a Walmart Express Delivery order. The move makes sense because Subway is Walmart's largest in store restaurant tenant, giving the retailer a built in partner to test the model.

The service is live in select stores across Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. Walmart plans to expand Subway delivery to about 1,400 stores by late summer. Executive Greg Cathey said quick service restaurants are generally located within 5 miles of Walmart, suggesting this could become a larger opportunity over time.

the story is bigger than sandwiches. If Walmart scales restaurant delivery, it could add pressure on DoorDash DASH and Uber Eats UBER .

Higher fuel prices from the Iran war have caused pain throughout the global economy. No one likes paying more money at the pump. Higher gasoline and diesel prices raise prices for everyone by driving up costs of business inventory, supplies, delivery, and freight shipping. But higher gas prices hit especially hard for lower-income people.

The world's largest retailer, Walmart (WMT +0.44%), could be especially vulnerable to higher gas prices. Its customer base tends to be lower-income households. If Walmart shoppers are forced to burn up more of their hard-earned dollars in their gas tanks, this could reduce their consumer discretionary spending.

According to Bloomberg, Walmart CEO John Furner said Wednesday that fuel prices are becoming "the stress point" for U.S. households. Walmart shares have gained about 5% year to date, underperforming the S&P 500 index.

Let's see if this retail stock is worth buying, or if investors should steer clear.

Image source: Getty Images.

Walmart customers are buying less than 10 gallons of gas at a time During the company's most recent quarterly earnings call on May 21, Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said that while Walmart's higher-income customers are "spending with confidence," the lower-income customers are "more budget conscious and perhaps navigating financial distress."

Rainey also said that "the number of gallons that customers fill up with when they come to our fuel stations fell below 10 for the first time since 2022." This is a sobering stat. It goes to show just how hard some Walmart shoppers are getting hurt by high gas prices -- they're trying to ration their own gasoline.

Why Walmart shares have been down since May 21 Walmart stock has declined by about 11% since the company reported earnings on May 21. According to CNBC, the sell-off happened because Walmart's guidance for the rest of its fiscal year 2027 was underwhelming to investors.

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The company said on May 21 that it expects net sales to increase 3.5% to 4.5% for the year, with expected adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $2.75 to $2.85 -- lower than expectations of $2.91. Walmart shares are trading at a trailing 12-month price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 41.16, which suggests the company is richly valued. Even the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ +0.59%), which tracks the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 index, has a lower P/E ratio (36.30).

If Walmart's earnings multiple is higher than that of some major tech stocks, and its expected earnings are disappointing analysts, that's a bad combination. I have previously written that Walmart was trading like a tech stock. But that was in February, right before the Iran war started and gas prices spiked.

This company has made valuable efforts to expand into e-commerce and gain market share with higher-income customers. But if gas prices stay high for the rest of 2026, Walmart might be more vulnerable to a sales slowdown than most major retailers.

Based on today's high valuation and the lingering uncertainty about gas prices, I wouldn't rate Walmart stock as a buy -- unless you're a patient investor and ready to hold the stock for five years or more.

Walmart (NYSE:WMT | WMT Price Prediction) trades at $116.89, with the post-earnings pullback offering a more attractive entry into a defensive retailer whose digital flywheel keeps accelerating against a sticky inflation backdrop.

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Walmart is tapping into its enormous scale to get the most out of AI. Dominick Reuter/Business Insider Walmart is big, but it wants to be bigger.

The retail giant employs more than 2 million people. It serves hundreds of millions of customers each week across thousands of stores in the US and around the world. And it's not sitting still.

Walmart is now working to speed up its business with a major assist from AI in just about every aspect of its operation.

I got to see this firsthand during its annual shareholders meeting at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, where executives and frontline workers shared how the technology is transforming retail.

AI is for everyoneFor starters, Walmart is using its scale to its advantage by equipping people at all levels of the company with the tools to wrangle AI.

"We want to democratize the access to learning and democratize the access to making a difference, so that people can learn and grow," CEO John Furner told reporters last week.

Walmart CEO John Furner.  Dominick Reuter/Business Insider The most talked-about example was the new Code Puppy agent that Walmart Global Tech distinguished engineer Mike Pfaffenberger built and shared with the organization.

Walmart already has a dizzying number of agents and a handful of super-agents tailored for particular use cases, but Code Puppy was notable for its ability to help people across the organization vibecode their own solutions — from salaried software engineers to hourly forklift drivers.

Unlike companies that may centralize AI development within traditionally tech-focused departments, Walmart's approach accelerates the pace at which new ideas can arise from the front lines and spread throughout the global enterprise.

"It doesn't matter where the idea came from. It could be in Bangalore. It could be in Greater Toronto. It could be Mexico City. It could be in Wichita, Kansas. Wherever the best idea is, we should take that and scale it," Furner said. "We just simply surface what's already been built, and then we see the adoption rates go much faster."

Some workers want better guardrailsWalmart's embrace of AI is not without controversy, however.

A shareholder proposal backed by United for Respect, a coalition of retail workers, criticized the impact of AI and automation on frontline employees.

Ava Williams, an overnight stocker in Washington, presented the proposal during the Walmart shareholders meeting. She said the new AI-powered workflows push workers like her to cut corners as they race against unrealistic expectations.

"We are not asking Walmart to stop using technology. We are asking for technology that works for us, not against us," she said.

Shareholders rejected the measure, and the company said it has multiple channels for employees to share their ideas and concerns.

Dominick Reuter/Business Insider The company also officially launched a credentialing program it built with OpenAI that is available to every employee, fulfilling a commitment it announced back in September.

The training program is intended to help employees build practical confidence with AI. They learn to integrate the tools into the problems they face in the real world.

The company highlighted one such case: A logistics manager who completed a Google AI certification and used those skills to develop an agent that helps Walmart identify routes that would get drivers home faster with fewer empty trucks.

Dominick Reuter/Business Insider Even the new delivery partnership with in-store Subway restaurants now comes with a hefty serving of AI.

Walmart order pickers already follow an AI-generated route through the store to fill the basket, and Walmart's head of digital fulfillment, Greg Cathey, said AI now also finds the right moment in that route to queue Subway workers to make the order.

"That is the AI that's timing everything to make sure the sandwich is going to be hot if it's hot — always fresh," Cathey said.

Deeper insights about what customers really wantOver at Walmart's warehouse club, Sam's Club Director of Consumer Insights Sue Jervis said she can now gain new details from the chain's fast-growing member feedback community thanks to the power of multimodal AI analysis.

She expressed a visceral disgust for five-star surveys and said the conversations and video clips she gets from participants give her a much more precise understanding of what really matters to them.

Thanks to AI, Jervis can tap into the 150,000-member group and extract not just what they're saying, but how they're saying it — the emotional register behind their feedback about the club's products and services.

Walmart Chief Growth Officer Seth Dallaire.  Dominick Reuter/Business Insider Walmart is also learning more about customers who use the company's new Sparky chatbot, which acts as a kind of personal shopping assistant.

"We're learning a ton just from how they're interacting with Sparky relative to ways that maybe historically they have interacted with us," Chief Growth Officer Seth Dallaire told reporters.

The value of that interaction is significant enough that the company is not rushing to serve ads in the chat, focusing instead on ensuring customers are getting what they want from the experience.

"We see long natural language query strings that look very different than someone typing in 'men's shoes,'" he said. "That is in itself is a really interesting piece of information for us."

Dominick Reuter/Business Insider Betting big on smaller thingsIt's telling that on Friday, Furner handed the President's Innovation Award to Pfaffenberger and his colleague, John Choi, for their work on Code Puppy.

"A vibe-coding tool that turns associates into engineers," Chief Technology Officer Suresh Kumar said. "They built a tool that supports the entire company."

Or, as Pfaffenberger asks in his documentation for the project, "Would you rather plow a field with one ox or 1,024 puppies? If you pick the ox, better slam that back button in your browser."

Walmart, big as it is, is betting on the puppies.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Read next

Dominick Reuter You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

Dominick Reuter is a senior retail reporter for Business Insider, primarily covering Walmart, Target, and Costco. His stories tend to focus on issues and trends that affect employees and customers.Prior to joining BI in 2019, Dominick worked for more than a decade as an independent photojournalist covering a wide range of stories for global wire services and newspapers, including Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and Agence France-Presse.Dominick studied photojournalism at Boston University and later earned a Masters in business and economics journalism from Columbia University.If you're an employee or customer with a story to share, please contact me via email or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750.

AI Artificial Intelligence Walmart More E-Commerce Retail

Key Takeaways WMT's global e-commerce sales rose 26%, with growth across U.S., International and Sam's Club. Walmart U.S. adjusted operating income rose 5.7% to $6 billion as e-commerce economics improved.WMT store-fulfilled delivery grew 45%, and 36% arrived in under three hours. Walmart Inc. (WMT - Free Report) continues to demonstrate how its omnichannel model is evolving beyond traditional retail, with e-commerce becoming an increasingly important driver of growth and profitability. The company’s first-quarter fiscal 2027 results underscored strong digital momentum, supported by faster fulfillment capabilities, marketplace expansion and growing contributions from higher-margin revenue streams.

Global e-commerce sales increased 26% in the quarter, led by store-fulfilled pickup and delivery as well as marketplace growth. The strength was evident across segments, with Walmart U.S. e-commerce sales rising 26%, Walmart International e-commerce sales advancing 27%, and Sam’s Club U.S. e-commerce sales growing 23%.

As digital sales scale, the focus is shifting from growth alone to the profitability of that growth. Walmart U.S. adjusted operating income rose 5.7% to $6 billion, while the adjusted operating income rate improved 6 basis points to 5.1%. The gain was aided by improved e-commerce economics, Walmart+ membership growth and other income benefits.

The company’s extensive store network remains a key advantage. Store-fulfilled delivery in Walmart U.S. grew about 45% in the quarter, and more than 36% of store-fulfilled deliveries were completed in less than three hours. Globally, Walmart delivered more than 3.5 billion units on the same day or the next day.

Even so, margin expansion remains a work in progress. Consolidated gross profit rate increased 6 basis points to 24.3%, but operating expenses continued to face pressure from higher fuel costs, depreciation and healthcare expenses. While near-term expenses remained elevated, the quarter suggested that Walmart’s growing e-commerce scale is increasingly being supported by better fulfillment economics and a richer mix of higher-margin digital revenues.

E-commerce Gains Put TGT and COST Margins in FocusTarget Corporation (TGT - Free Report) is also benefiting from growing digital demand. In its first quarter, TGT reported comparable digital sales growth of 8.9%, driven by more than 27% growth in same-day delivery through Target Circle 360. Gross margin expanded to 29% from 28.2%, while adjusted operating margin improved to 4.5% from 3.7%.

Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST - Free Report) continues to post robust online-related growth. Digitally enabled comparable sales increased 21.1% in May and 21.6% for the first 39 weeks of the fiscal year. Total comparable sales rose 12.5% in May, while net sales increased 14.5% to $24.01 billion. COST’s strong digitally enabled sales growth highlights the growing importance of e-commerce and convenience-led shopping across the retail landscape.

WMT Stock Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesShares of Walmart have risen 22% over the past year compared with the industry’s growth of 20.3%.

WMT Price Performance Versus Industry
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

From a valuation standpoint, WMT trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 39.36, higher than the industry’s average of 35.83.

WMT Valuation Compared to Industry
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research