Visa says AI investment and digital commerce are carrying the global economy

Visa forecasts 2.6% global economic growth in 2026, citing a surge in business investment in artificial intelligence and clean energy, along with digital commerce helping to contain inflation, as consumers adapt to higher energy costs.

The payments giant’s midyear outlook forecasts 2.4% global growth in 2026, crediting an investment boom and online price competition for absorbing the strain of higher energy costs. The company that sees a slice of nearly every card swipe on the planet has a view on where the economy is heading, and the view is cautiously upbeat. Visa expects the global economy to grow 2.4% in 2026, according to its Business and Economic Insights https://usa.visa.com/partner-with-us/visa-consulting-analytics/leverage-economic-and-business-insights.html , with a surge of business investment in artificial intelligence and clean energy offsetting the strain that rising energy prices are placing on household budgets. The figure is Visa’s own, drawn from its proprietary transaction data and economic modelling, and it sits toward the more conservative end of the forecasting range. The IMF’s April projection put 2026 global growth at 3.1% on a purchasing-power-parity basis, while the World Bank, which weights its figures differently, landed at 2.5%, close to Visa’s number. The gap is mostly methodology rather than disagreement, but it is worth keeping in view: this is one company’s read, anchored in what it can see on its own network. What Visa sees, it says, is adjustment rather than retreat. “As digital commerce continues to reshape how people shop and pay, consumers are finding more ways to compare prices and stretch their budgets, helping to keep inflation in check,” said Wayne Best, the company’s chief economist. He added that business investment is rising sharply, with companies building out AI, clean energy, and stronger supply chains “at levels we haven’t seen since 2010.” The report frames three forces holding the economy up. The first is the consumer, whom Visa describes as adapting rather than collapsing. Even with higher costs weighing on budgets, the company’s data shows discretionary spending holding relatively steady, with what it calls tentative signs of firming. The behaviour has shifted toward deal-seeking, and increasingly that hunt happens online, where comparing prices and finding cheaper alternatives is easier than it has ever been. That points to the second force, which is Visa’s most distinctive claim: that digital commerce is itself helping to contain inflation. In smaller, peripheral cities, the company says online adoption has nearly doubled since before the pandemic, rising from about 31% to 56% across the nearly 600 cities it analysed, in markets as varied as Bern and San Juan. Where online penetration is higher, Visa argues, price competition is stronger and inflation lower, which eases the squeeze on households as energy costs climb. The third force is the one most likely to resonate with anyone tracking the technology sector: a broad-based investment boom that Visa calls the strongest industrial investment cycle since 2010. Capital spending by the world’s three largest economies, the US, the EU, and China, is rising in tandem as companies race to build AI capacity, shift to cleaner energy, and secure strategic supply chains. On that point the wider data is hard to argue with. Hyperscaler capital expenditure is on track to exceed $690bn in 2026 https://thenextweb.com/news/oracle-q4-fy2026-capex-55-billion-ai-data-center-openai , a more than third higher than the year before, the bulk of it poured into data centres and the power to run them. The scale of that build-out is straining electricity grids from Denmark to China https://thenextweb.com/news/denmark-data-centre-grid-pause-ai-energy , a reminder that the clean-energy transition Visa folds into its optimistic story is colliding with the very AI demand driving the investment. The same dynamic shapes the digital-commerce thread. Online shopping is no longer just spreading geographically; its mechanics are changing, with AI increasingly deciding which stores shoppers see https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-choosing-online-stores-ignoring-most-recomaze , which complicates the tidy link Visa draws between online penetration and open price competition. The outlook comes with the usual caveats of a corporate forecast: it reflects the views of Visa’s economics team rather than the company’s management, and it rests on proprietary data the public cannot inspect. Read with those qualifications, the message is straightforward enough. Visa thinks consumers are bending rather than breaking, that online competition is taking some heat out of prices, and that an investment wave it has not seen the likes of in 15 years is doing the heavy lifting. Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.