NEW YORK – Visa said Thursday that its fiscal first-quarter results rose 24 percent from a year earlier, as more people spent money on Visa’s namesake credit and debit cards.

The San Francisco-based company reported earnings of $1.94 billion, or 80 cents a share, compared with $1.57 billion, or 63 cents a share, from a year earlier. Excluding a one-time adjustment, Visa earned 69 cents per share, beating estimates by a penny.

Visa cardholders spent $1.305 trillion dollars on credit and debit cards in the last three months of a year, up 11.5 percent from a year earlier, on a constant-dollar basis.