Visa Inc. operates the world's largest electronic payments network, providing processing services and payment product platforms, including credit, debit, prepaid, and commercial payments, under the brands Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink, and PLUS. Visa/PLUS is one of the world's largest ATM networks, offering cash access in local currency in more than 200 countries and territories.

Stocks are lower at midday on signs that the U.S. economy is slowing faster than expected. For 1Q, consumers and businesses scooped up imports tilting the trade balance and lowering GDP. We got a big hint that this was coming in the Trade Deficit in Goods numbers out yesterday proving the rush to buy imports before expected price increases due to tariffs. The advance estimate for GDP showed a decline of 0.3%, the first contraction in 3 years. Key inflation data out this morning shows the pace of inflation is slowing. Headline PCE slowed to 2.3% in March versus 2.7% the month before. Core PCE decelerated to 2.6% compared to 3.0%. On a month-by-month basis, both measures came in at 0.0% changed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note is 4.16%. Oil is at $60 per barrel.

Visa is the largest payment processor in the world. In fiscal 2023, it processed almost $15 trillion in total volume. Visa operates in over 200 countries and processes transactions in over 160 currencies. Its systems are capable of processing over 65,000 transactions per second.

The United States economy is full of innovation. It has to be. Manufacturing industries that dominated the economy decades ago - textiles, televisions, even automobiles to a large degree - have moved overseas, where labor and materials costs are lower. Yet the U.S. economy, even during the pandemic and the recent period of high inflation, has expanded to record levels. If U.S. corporations weren't innovating, creating new products (such as AI and vaccines) and services (such as Zoom calls and Netflix), as well as moving into new markets (clean energy, rare drugs), the domestic economy would not be growing, and capital would not be flooding into the country. Consider that U.S. GDP was approximately $1 trillion in 1930 but was almost $30 trillion at the end of 2024. That's growth of 30-times. Meanwhile, the U.S. population has grown less than 3-times during that time span, to 340 million from 120 million. The delta between GDP growth and population growth has been driven, in large part, by innovation.