Visa's "Financial Alchemy" & The Rise of Agentic Commerce: Q1 2026 earnings - 1.29.2026 (038)

Visa just posted a double-digit earnings beat with operating margins hitting nearly 62%, yet the stock sold off sharply after hours. Why? 📉 In this episode, Susie and Miro look past the headline numbers to uncover the "messy" engineering holding it all together. From "financial alchemy" that turns litigation reserves into effective share buybacks, to worrying "write-downs" that suggest banks are missing their volume targets, we break down why this quarter was more complex than it looked.Plus, we explore Visa's massive pivot from a plastic card company to the infrastructure for the machine economy. With 17.5 billion tokens now in circulation (3x the number of physical cards), management is betting the house on "Agentic Commerce"-a future where AI bots negotiate and pay for your travel.Is this the tech pivot that saves them from the DOJ antitrust lawsuit, or just a shiny object distracting from a leak in US debit dominance? 🤖💳