Visa Inc.

"VISA" redirects here. For the document needed to enter a country's territory, see Travel visa. For other uses, see Visa (disambiguation).

Visa Inc.
Company typePublic
IndustryPayment cards services
FoundedSeptember 18, 1958; 66 years ago (1958-09-18) (as BankAmericard in Fresno, California, U.S.)
FounderDee Hock
HeadquartersSan Francisco, California, U.S.[1]
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Products
RevenueIncrease US$35.93 billion (2024)
Increase US$23.60 billion (2024)
Increase US$19.74 billion (2024)
Total assetsIncrease US$94.51 billion (2024)
Total equityIncrease US$39.14 billion (2024)
Number of employees
31,600 (2024)
Websitevisa.com
Footnotes / references
Financials as of September 30, 2024.[3]

Visa Inc. (/ˈviːzə, ˈviːsə/) is an American multinational payment card services corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California.[1][4] It facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly through Visa-branded credit cards, debit cards and prepaid cards.[5]

Visa does not issue cards, extend credit, or set rates and fees for consumers; rather, Visa provides financial institutions with Visa-branded payment products that they then use to offer credit, debit, prepaid and cash access programs to their customers. In 2015, the Nilson Report, a publication that tracks the credit card industry, found that Visa's global network (known as VisaNet) processed 100 billion transactions during 2014 with a total volume of US$6.8 trillion.[6]

Visa was founded in 1958 by Bank of America (BofA) as the BankAmericard credit card program.[7] In response to competitor Master Charge (now Mastercard), BofA began to license the BankAmericard program to other financial institutions in 1966.[8] By 1970, BofA gave up direct control of the BankAmericard program, forming a cooperative with the other various BankAmericard issuer banks to take over its management. It was then renamed Visa in 1976.[9]

Nearly all Visa transactions worldwide are processed through the company's directly operated VisaNet at one of four secure data centers, located in Ashburn, Virginia and Highlands Ranch, Colorado in the United States; London, England; and in Singapore.[10] These facilities are heavily secured against natural disasters, crime, and terrorism; can operate independently of each other and from external utilities if necessary; and can handle up to 30,000 simultaneous transactions and up to 100 billion computations every second.[6][11][12]

Visa is the world's second-largest card payment organization (debit and credit cards combined), after being surpassed by China UnionPay in 2015, based on annual value of card payments transacted and number of issued cards.[13] However, because UnionPay's size is based primarily on the size of its domestic market in China, Visa is still considered the dominant bankcard company in the rest of the world, where it commands a 50% market share of total card payments.[13]

  1. ^ a b Naidu, Pawan (June 7, 2024). "Visa Moves Into California HQ as Part of Mixed-Use Redevelopment in Office Construction Hotspot". CoStar News. Retrieved August 4, 2024.
  2. ^ Harring, Alex (November 17, 2022). "Visa says Ryan McInerney will replace Al Kelly as its next CEO". CNBC. Retrieved September 22, 2023.
  3. ^ "U.S. SEC: Visa Inc. Form 10-K". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. November 13, 2024. Retrieved November 14, 2024.
  4. ^ "Visa Inc. 2021 Annual Report" (PDF). Visa Inc. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 6, 2022. Retrieved August 17, 2022.
  5. ^ Visa Archived September 30, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved March 26, 2010.
  6. ^ a b Fisher, Daniel (May 25, 2015). "Visa Moves at the Speed of Money". Forbes. Archived from the original on August 6, 2020. Retrieved May 1, 2016. This article is authored by a Forbes staff member.
  7. ^ Stearns, David L. (2011). Electronic Value Exchange: Origins of the Visa Electronic Payment System. London: Springer. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-84996-138-7. Archived from the original on March 28, 2023. Retrieved March 20, 2023. Available through SpringerLink.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Visa Latam was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference Thomas was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ "Map and List of VisaNet's Data Centers". Baxtel. Archived from the original on October 19, 2018. Retrieved October 18, 2018.
  11. ^ Kontzer, Tony (May 29, 2013). "Inside Visa's Data Center | Network Computing". www.networkcomputing.com. Archived from the original on May 16, 2016. Retrieved May 1, 2016.
  12. ^ Swartz, Jon (March 25, 2012). "Top secret Visa data center banks on security, even has moat". USA Today. Archived from the original on November 9, 2018. Retrieved February 20, 2017.
  13. ^ a b "UnionPay takes top spot from Visa in $22 trillion global cards market – RBR". Finextra. London: Finextra Research Limited. July 22, 2016. Archived from the original on June 4, 2019. Retrieved February 3, 2017.