Visa is an international financial services company that facilitates electronic transactions throughout the world. It does this through its line of cards.
They include:
- credit cards
- debit cards
- prepaid cards
The company does not cater to individuals. Instead, it concentrates on financial institutions offering them the use of the Visa logo. It is a digital network that processes tens of billions of transactions per year.
This totals trillions of dollars of payments.
History
Visa was founded in 1958 as part of Bank of America. It was part of the BankAmericard credit card program. In 1966 it started to license this out to other financial institutions.
In 1970, Bank of America gave up control, turning it over to a consortium of institutions that were using the service. The program was named Visa in 1976.
Visa presently controls 50% of all the payments processed outside of China.