New York, Feb 16, 2026, 4:27 PM EST — Market closed.
- Visa shares last closed at $314.08, down 3.1%, before U.S. markets went dark for the Presidents Day holiday.
- Investors are weighing new European pressure over reliance on non-EU payment rails, alongside Visa’s own capital-structure moves.
- Focus turns to Tuesday’s reopen for any follow-on filings, policy headlines and sector read-through to Mastercard and AmEx.
Visa Inc. shares ended the last U.S. session down 3.1% at $314.08, and trading will resume on Tuesday after U.S. markets stayed shut on Monday for the Presidents Day holiday. (AP News)
The immediate setup is awkward: the stock just took a sharp one-day hit into a long weekend, and the next catalyst for the name may come from regulators rather than from Visa’s own calendar. For investors, the debate over who controls payment plumbing in Europe has moved from policy papers into a very public shop-floor argument.
Reuters reported from Milan that Visa’s long-running Olympics sponsorship deal leaves it as the sole card accepted at official Milano Cortina Games stores, with signs telling customers, “We accept only Visa,” while staff offer prepaid cards on the spot. The report also cited European Central Bank executive board member Piero Cipollone saying international card schemes such as Visa and Mastercard account for about two-thirds of card transactions in the euro area, and quoted his warning: “To put it simply: if we lose control of our money, we lose control of our economic destiny.” A Visa spokesperson said the company was committed to making the purchase experience for Milano Cortina products “the best it can be,” Reuters said. (Reuters)
That matters because Europe has been talking more loudly about “payment sovereignty” — who sets the rules, who holds the data, and what happens if a handful of foreign networks become a single point of failure. It is not an overnight earnings issue, but it can turn into fee pressure, routing changes, or tougher rules on wallet and card acceptance over time.
Visa investors also have a nearer-term, company-specific file to digest: a corporate action that could affect share supply at the margin. In a Feb. 13 filing, Visa said its board authorized the company to proceed with a successive exchange offer tied to its Class B common stock once conditions are met, including a litigation-linked threshold around estimated interchange reimbursement fees in unresolved U.S. covered cases. (Securities and Exchange Commission)
Interchange is the fee merchants pay when customers use cards; the litigation referenced in the filing involves merchant claims around those charges. Visa said it expects to extend the exchange offer to holders of Class B-1 and Class B-2 stock, allowing an exchange into a mix of restricted Class B-3 shares and freely transferable Class C shares, with timing subject to conditions and SEC review. (Securities and Exchange Commission)
Moves in the broader payments complex did not help sentiment into the weekend. Mastercard shares last closed down about 1.7% and American Express fell about 1.6% in the same session.
But there are two ways this can go wrong for bulls. Europe’s push can harden into actual constraints faster than investors expect — or just as plausibly, it can drift for years, leaving Visa exposed to headlines without a clean way to trade them. Separately, even a well-telegraphed share-exchange process can reawaken “overhang” worries if the market starts pricing in incremental selling.
For Tuesday, traders will watch whether Visa stabilizes on the reopen after Friday’s slide, and whether fresh European policy commentary — or any next-step SEC paperwork tied to the Class B exchange plan — shows up quickly enough to set the tone for the week.
