AmEx, Visa Announce First-Quarter Profits

D espite the U.S. economic slump, American Express posted a 15 percent gain in quarterly profits, the company's first rise in more than a year. Visa International also announced revenue from its global payments division increased, by 18 percent to $2.14 trillion in sales volume in 2001.

Thanks in part to cost-cutting measures, AmEx's consolidated revenue rose to $5.5 billion from $5.4 billion the previous year. The company was able to increase investments in marketing efforts, as well as card acquisition, product development and asset gathering, because of restructuring and an economic climate that was better than expected.

Visa attributes its growth to significant gains in debit, commercial and premium products. The company's debit card sales volume has more than doubled in the last five years, and the number of transactions has increased to more than 30 billion on a card base of 1.17 billion.

Its premium cards category, including Gold, Platinum and Infinite cards, grew nearly 22 percent last year to $635 billion in sales volume. In the U.S. alone, the number of premium cards grew 24 percent to $146.8 million and sales volume grew by 17.6 percent to $386.4 billion.

During the peak holiday shopping season, Visa processed more than 4,000 transactions per second.