One Year Later: We Predicted Visa Would Overtake Walmart. Here’s Where That Stands.

On April 14, 2025, we argued that Visa (NYSE: V | V Price Prediction) would overtake Walmart (NYSE: WMT) in market cap within five years. Both have now reported full fiscal years, with Visa’s Q1 FY2026 landing on January 29, 2026, while Walmart posted FY26 on February 19, 2026. Turns out, the gap widened.

The One-Year Scoreboard Isn’t Close

Walmart is worth roughly $1.04 trillion, while Visa’s is near $598 billion. The retailer roughly doubles the payments network.

The retailer’s Q4 revenue hit $190.66 billion, with global eCommerce up 24% and advertising up 37% on VIZIO integration. Full-year ad revenue neared $6.4 billion. Expedited delivery now reaches 95% of U.S. households in under three hours. New CEO John Furner called retail’s pace of change “fast, convenient, and personalized.” Tariff fears pushed shoppers toward value, and Walmart absorbed the traffic while protecting margin, with gross margin up 13 basis points.

Fundamentally, Visa executed. Q1 FY26 net revenue rose 14.6% to $10.90 billion, data processing revenue jumped 17%, and cross-border volume climbed 11%. Ryan McInerney described Visa as a “payments hyperscaler.” The stock ignored it. Reddit sentiment went cold after the February headline “Europe’s $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard Has Begun”, and interchange MDL provisions have now totaled $3.213 billion across four quarters. Regulation reset the multiple.

Why the Call May Be Merely Delayed

The margin story holds. Visa’s operating margin is still 68.3%. Inflation pass-through worked, with payments volume up 8%. What broke was the deregulatory assumption. EU alternatives, a proposed U.S. credit card rate cap, and ongoing multidistrict litigation costs turned the regulatory backdrop hostile. Walmart’s operational leverage also surprised to the upside. Adjusted operating income grew 10.8% in Q4, outpacing sales.

The prediction was wrong through year one, clearly. The gap widened from roughly $100 billion to nearly half a trillion. That said, the case may still have legs. Walmart trades at 44x forward earnings with 3.07% profit margins, while Visa earns 54% and trades at a steep discount to its own history. For investors prioritizing ballast through tariff noise, Walmart’s operational execution stands out. For those weighing regulatory overhang against a higher-quality business at a reset price, Visa screens more attractively today than it did at $332. While the timing of the five-year projection may not hold up, the case for Visa to overtake Walmart in market cap could still come to pass.