Cross-border transactions powered by Visa and Mastercard contribute significantly to their growth in the fourth quarter of 2023
In the year 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, both Visa and Mastercard have experienced notable growth in cross-border payment volumes.
For Visa, cross-border volume growth was around 11% year over year in Q3 2024, excluding intra-Europe transactions. This growth included a 13% increase in e-commerce cross-border transactions and 9% in travel-related cross-border payments. Cross-border payments volume growth moderated due to currency fluctuations and seasonal timing effects but remained above pre-COVID trends. In Q2 2025, cross-border transactions increased by 13%, driven by emerging markets and normalization of travel activities despite currency volatility.
Visa Direct real-time transactions, including cross-border person-to-person (P2P) payments, grew 25% year over year to 3.3 billion transactions, showing strength in both domestic and cross-border flows. Overall, Visa's global payment volume increased by about 6.76% in 2024 to $13.2 trillion.
Visa has also formed new partnerships with Western Union, Remitly, CIBC, Simplii, and HSBC's Zing to help these companies expand their remittances capabilities. The company now enables global payments across 8.5 billion endpoints in nearly 200 countries and territories. Cross-border travel for Visa increased by 142% compared to 2019 levels in Q1 2024.
For Mastercard, there is less specific volume data available, but the company is implicated in overall trends of facing regulatory and legal pressures in Europe regarding interchange fees, which may impact fee structures and volumes. Innovation efforts such as tokenization covering nearly half of Mastercard’s European transactions, enhancing secure cross-border e-commerce, are underway.
In Q4 2023, Mastercard's net revenues increased by 9% to $6.5 billion, and cross-border assessments rose by 23% to $2.2 billion. Mastercard also saw 19% net revenue growth in value-added services and solutions in Q4 2023. The company has new and expanded partnerships with UBS, Alipay, Arab Bank, and Dubai Islamic Bank.
While Visa's cross-border payment volumes show a clear growth trajectory in 2023 and early 2024, supported by travel normalization and digital payment innovation, Mastercard’s detailed volume trends for the same period are not explicitly reported here but can be inferred to follow similar competitive dynamics.
In the world of finance, Visa's cross-border payment volumes experienced a significant surge in 2024, with a 13% increase in e-commerce transactions and 9% growth in travel-related payments. This growth trend continued into Q2 2025, spotlighting a 13% increase in cross-border transactions, demonstrating the impact of technology in shaping the business landscape. Mastercard, on the other hand, saw a 23% rise in cross-border assessments in Q4 2023, reflecting a shift in focus towards value-added services and solutions in line with the evolving technology landscape.
