U.S. consumers may have spent less in 2011, but the world's biggest payment network beat analyst expectations by expanding its international card business. Shares also got a boost in October after the company announced it would raise its quarterly dividend by 47% to 22 cents a share.
The company is positioning itself for the next phase of growth. It intends to generate more than half of its revenues from markets abroad by 2015. It recently announced a plan to help develop Rwanda's payments system, and its also launched prepaid accounts linked to mobile phones across Africa and the Middle East.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., where Visa derived about 56% of its revenue in 2011, the company faces renewed competition from rival MasterCard, which has poached some U.S. banks that have traditionally used Visa to process their customers' debit and credit card transactions.
