The market thinks Visa and Mastercard are about to be disrupted, and it's pricing them like it.
By Vlad from Bastion on
$MA trades 34% below its 10-year median P/E, a decade-low multiple. $V is in the same spot.
Here's what the fear actually is.
Fear 1: stablecoins. A digital dollar you send straight to a merchant, skipping the bank-Visa-store chain.
A real worry, but it's ~2% of Visa's volume today. For this to replace your daily card, millions of merchants have to accept it and everyone needs a wallet. That's years away from being a habit.
Fear 2: regulation. The Credit Card Competition Act, reintroduced in January 2026, could cut card fees from ~1.8-2.0% to ~1.25%, with $ 10B+ of industry revenue at stake. Analysts put the odds of passage at 30-40%.
Both fears look overdone to me. These are still two of the best compounders in the market, and the kind of names that fit a long-term Quality Compounder strategy. Our algorithm agrees: it picks both networks for the GEAR+ portfolio.