The results of card providers which are released at this time of year always make for interesting reading. Visa Europe has published its annual report this weekwhile Mastercard will do so at the end of the week.
There are some interesting stories in them. Visa Europe announced a huge surge in the use of contactless payments. Cardholders spent €16.1 billion in 1.4 billion transactions in the year to June 2015 - an increase of 335% on the previous year.
Despite the rise of contactless, and other innovations such as Apple and Android Pay, Visa Europe still sees huge potential ahead.
CEO Nicolas Huss said, "This remains a high-growth, high-touch, high-value industry. It is a focus of attention among fintech start-ups, investors and digital giants. The vast majority of payments — around 70% of them — are still settled in cash. And it is hard to think of another industry with so much opportunity ahead of it."
Gross spending on Visa cards is up too — by 7.7% year on year at the point of sale.
American Express's earnings report for the fourth quarter of 2015 was interesting in a different way.
Spending on American Express cards is growing too, by around 5% year on year. Yet a closer look at the figures reveals something else going on. Our chart this week shows the breakdown of Amex's billed business by segment.
In this chart, USCS represents US card services (US personal cardholders), ICS is international card services (international personal cardholders), GCS is global commercial services (essentially corporate cardholders) and GNS is global network services (cards issued by Amex financial partners).
The slump in the green, corporate spending line is dramatic.
Chief executive Kenneth Chenault said during a fourth quarter earnings call that the performance of global commercial services was affected by "lower airline volumes and a generally cautious corporate spending environment".
He added that the corporate segment has been the most disappointing for the company during 2015.
He added, "You have heard me say before that the easiest expense category [for corporates] to cut is T&E... In my 30 years' experience, cutbacks in T&E tend to be an early indicator of a slowdown. I am not sure what will happen but we do believe that we will see some improvement in commercial in 2016."
American Express shares fell by 11% on the day of the earnings call.