Visa confirms talks to bring European former unit back to roots

Shares of Visa, which also reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit as its US customers spent more, rose as much as 7.5% to USD 77.11 in extended trading. In May 2015, Bloomberg reported that Visa was in talks to buy Visa Europe for up to USD 20 billion.

Visa Inc and Visa Europe, a cooperative of European banks with over 500 million cards, were part of a global bank-owned network until 2007. Most of the units merged to form Visa Inc, which went public in 2008, leaving Visa Europe as a separate entity. Visa Europe had a 52.2 percent share of the Europe market in 2013 in terms of value of payments, according to its website.

The Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa region accounts for nearly 4.8 percent of Visas payment volumes. For MasterCard, Europe made up for about 26 percent of total purchase volume in the first quarter.