Visa Brazil President Rodrigo Cury says there’s a typical question he has to answer during family Sunday lunches: Why can’t someone increase their card limit? For this, there is a ready analogy. “I don’t produce cars (cards and credit). I make the roads.”
The answer illustrates one of Visa’s business premises. An American multinational specializing in payment technologies, present in more than 200 countries with 4.8 billion identifiers (including physical and digital cards and tokens), the company has no direct contact with the consumer. Its clients are financial institutions and commercial establishments. Hence the fact that the company is not responsible for issuing the card or granting the credit.
Visa is responsible for “preparing” the digital business environment through which money flows, which involves organizing a complex data network that must operate in real time, involving information about the customer, the bank, the acquirer (owner of the “card machine”) and the institution. There are approximately 15,000 financial institutions, 150 million commercial establishments and nearly 5 billion identifiers worldwide, which generate a huge volume of data on purchases made through CPFs and CNPJs. This data is encrypted and therefore appears to the multinational in the form of codes.
But it is precisely this information-rich environment that will lead Visa towards a new “path” of growth in the coming years: in addition to ensuring the security and efficiency of financial transactions on a global level, the company is increasingly starting to use generative artificial intelligence to identify consumer tastes, trends and purchasing behaviors. According to Visa, 2025 was the last year customers made and completed purchases on their own, without an AI agent.
“You like to do certain things on your vacation, for example, that only you know. Now not only you know: there is an artificial intelligence agent who knows you very well. Based on simple instructions, it will search for all travel options, tours and activities that are part of your profile and your budget to even do the shopping for you, making your life easier,” explains Cury.
This is always done with the user’s authorization and in a safe environment, without “hallucinations” that could lead to inappropriate purchases, he specifies. “The idea is to use it in everyday purchases, shopping for example, to save time,” he explains. “Visa is one of the companies in the world investing the most in artificial intelligence.”
The card brand has worked with over a hundred global partners to implement Visa Intelligent Commerce (VIC), which has already produced hundreds of transactions monitored and initiated by AI agents. In the United States, the first pilot projects began this year. At the start of 2026, it will be the turn of Europe and Asia-Pacific. In Latin America and the Caribbean, solutions will be presented throughout the year.
Investing in artificial intelligence will increase the sale of higher value-added services, which currently represent between 30 and 35% of Visa’s revenue. “Until a decade ago, the company’s work focused on infrastructure and security of financial transactions,” says Cury. But the advance of instant payment methods, such as the Brazilian Pix, has shaken up the company.
Between 2021 and 2024, Pix became the main payment method used in Brazil: it increased from 46.1% to 76.4% of the total population, according to data from the Central Bank. As a result, it overtook the use of cash (until then the main means of payment), which fell from 83.6% to 68.9%. Although card usage also increased during this period, the increase was much lower than that of Pix: in debit it increased from 61.7% to 69.1%, and in credit from 44.5% to 51.6%.
In terms of transaction volume, in the third quarter of this year, Pix remains in the lead, with 20.5 billion. Consolidated cards (debit, credit and prepaid) came in second place, with 11.6 billion transactions in the quarter ended September.
But according to Cury, the tool also represents a revenue opportunity. “Pix has been the victim of scams and attempted fraud – and ensuring secure transactions is one of the pillars of our business,” he says. “In Brazil, we have a pilot (project) underway with the Visa solution to protect the Pix transaction, and thus serve the banks.”
In the world, the two largest multinationals in the card sector are the American Visa and Mastercard. Despite being a global leader, Visa lost the top position in Brazil to its rival. In recent years, Mastercard has signed major deals with fintechs and digital banks, such as Nubank and C6 Bank, which have secured it a leading position in the market.
In the opinion of Willer Marcondes, partner for financial services at Strategy, a strategic consulting firm at PwC Brazil, the name “flagship” for Visa or Mastercard does not adequately reflect what the companies do. In English, he says, the expression is more appropriate: “card Scheme”.
“They are the ones who dictate the rules of the game: their mission is to say how a payment should go out on one side and how it will be received on the other,” explains Marcondes. “It sounds simple, but when you consider over 200 countries around the world, each with their own tax rules, central bank, legislation and provisions, someone has to provide payment guarantees, thereby bringing liquidity into the system every time someone uses the card outside the country.”
As for the possibility that Pix, launched at the end of 2020, will kill the debit card, Marcondes points out that it generally takes a long time for one method to “kill” the other in the financial system. “For at least 20 years, the check has been an outdated solution, but one that still holds up,” he believes.
“From a brand perspective, new services are emerging around Pix, linked to authentication and payment execution mechanisms, which open up a set of opportunities for companies in the sector,” he says. “(Pix) It’s not the end of the line, but it requires investment and responsiveness, to understand this new reality of banking, which ceases to be a place where you store money to be a place that offers digital experiences.”
Rodrigo Cury agrees. According to him, there is a strong correlation between debit and the main current account: the customer uses the modality more on his main bank card. “We thought the debt would be reduced to ashes (after Pix), and that’s not the case. It still represents 1 trillion reais in transactions per year.”
BRAZIL VISA X-ray
- Foundation: 1983
- Thirsty: Sao Paulo
- Employees: 350
- Presence: approximately 70 million cards
- Market share : 40%
- Main competitors: Mastercard, Elo
- Net turnover 2024*: 35.9 billion US dollars (199 billion reais)
*global income
2026, HOW TO USE
New series of Leaf offers weekly interviews in text and video, presenting the expectations, fears and strategies chosen for 2026 by the main leaders of ten different segments: supermarkets, retail, consortia, textiles, footwear and clothing, air conditioning, technology, telephony, financial services and mobility. All companies in the series earn more than 1 billion reais per year.
About The Author
