[R]5:00PM New York – Visa second quarter earnings rises 28%. Stock falls $3 in the after hours of trading.[/R]

Visa Inc, the recently listed credit card processing reported second quarter earnings rose 28% to $314 million on revenue of $1.45 billion compared to $1.19 billion or $246 million. Earnings per share were 39 cents per class A share.

Visa (V: chart) fell $3 in the after-hours trading to $72.63 cents and in the regular hours traded as high as $77.29 but settled 53 cents higher at $75.63.

Visa priced its offering at $44 per share on March 18.

On an adjusted basis net income for the quarter considering normalized tax rate and excluding litigation, restructuring and purchase amortization, was $401 million, or $0.52 per diluted class A common share. Adjusted diluted class A common shares outstanding were 779 million.

Total cards with the Visa logos jumped 16% to 1.6 billion in the quarter and payment volume rose 19% to $681 billion. Total volume including cash increased 21% to $1.1 trillion.

Total processed transaction increased 15% to 8.8 billion from a year ago.

For the six months net income rose to $738 million or 93 cents per diluted class A common share and on an adjusted basis diluted earnings per share increased to $1.08.

Fiscal year 2008 outlook

For the fiscal year 2008 Visa guided annual revenue rise between 11% and 15% and annual adjusted dilute class A common earnings per share to grow at 20% or more.

Visa priced its initial public offering on March 18 and raised more than $19 billion in the largest public offering in the U.S. The offering does not include Visa Europe.

Visa set aside $3 billion in escrow account the public offering to pay for litigation costs and paid $945 million to American Express as a part of the litigation settlement.

Consumer trends

Consumers in the U.S. are using charge and debit cards to pay for many purchases including groceries, pharmaceuticals and household items. As income in Asian countries rise more consumers are using Visa and MasterCard to pay for personal expenses.

At the end of 2007, Visa processed charges for $3.23 trillion for 44 billion transactions from 1.4 billion cards. During the same period, MasterCard processed $1.9 trillion for 23.4 billion transactions from 817 million cards. American Express processed $562 billion for 4.5 billion transactions from 78 million cards. Discover has issued 57 million cards and Diners Club network has 7 million cards under its logo.