Visa CEO: Consumer spending showing 'stability, resiliency'
At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Tech Conference, Visa CEO Ryan McInerney displayed optimism about US consumers.
The consumers are all right.
That's according to Visa (V) CEO Ryan McInerney, who told the audience at the Goldman Sachs (GS) Communacopia and Tech Conference in San Francisco that he's seeing consumer spending find "stability, resiliency in the US and around the world."
"Overall process transactions remained stable at 10%," McInerney said. "In the US, I would also say stable — a slight uptick in US payment volume to 7%. For debit, transaction growth in the US was stable, so the driver of market uptake was an increase in average ticket size."
Translation: Consumers with debit cards are spending more each time they spend. Visa has additionally seen improvements in both the travel and e-commerce sectors, McInerney said.
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This tempered-but-real bullishness on the consumer extends beyond the US too.
"We're also seeing stability outside the US in our domestic payments markets and a slight uptick in key markets around the world," McInerney said.
The international link is an important key to Visa's future growth. "We see a $10 trillion annual opportunity in cross-border large-ticket transactions," he added.
McInerney's optimism links up with Goldman's new economic forecast, released Tuesday morning.
"Several of the drivers of income growth in 2023 are likely to repeat in 2024," Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius wrote on Sept. 5. "Continued job gains and positive real wage growth should continue to boost real income, and household interest income should increase as yields on interest bearing assets rise to reflect past rate increases."
In Wall Street's parlance, Hatzius expects the US consumer to beat estimates.
"Provided that job and real wage growth don’t significantly underperform our forecasts, we expect that the US consumer will outperform consensus expectations," he wrote.
In short, for today, in one of the most exclusive rooms in San Francisco, recession fears are nearly non-existent.
Read more coverage of the 2023 Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Tech conference:
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Goldman Sachs chief economist: US consumer won't break in 2024
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Allie Garfinkle is a Senior Tech Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @agarfinks and on LinkedIn.
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