Visa is the world's salient trade-mark of electronic-payment card. There are added than one billion Visa cards in circulation.

The two leading forms of electronic-payment card are credit cards and debit cards. A credit card enables its holder to produce purchases on a border of credit (a amiable of loan) issued by a financial institution, normally a bank. A debit card (also avowed as a proof card) simply allows its holder to access existing cash money in his or her checking account. Whereas a credit card allows the cardholder to go back the bigness of the invest in to the bank in monthly installments, debit cards desire that the buy be paid for in plentiful at the date of the sale.

Visa is the brand compellation of Visa International Avail Association, a corporation owned by some 20,000 member banks that are licensed to query Visa cards under their own names (for example, Bank of America Visa or Wells Fargo Visa). Visa International itself does not argument cards or favor credit to cardholders. Rather, everyone member bank issues the cards, setting its own terms of treaty (such as the annual price for using the card, the consequence scale that testament be charged on dominant credit balances, and late-payment penalties) with cardholders. Member banks are too authoritative for contacting merchants with requests that they catch Visa cards and for providing the expedient scientific benefit for these merchants to knob Visa acquire transactions. The banks that topic Visa cards compete with one another for cardholders, even they are all bound well-organized by the necessitate to ease so that participating merchants can proceeds a Visa card issued by any bank.

Visa International's central role is to serve as a hub between cardholders and merchants. It does this by maintaining the massive, around-the-clock electronic-payment network fini which purchases are processed. Visa International is besides answerable for enhancing its brand flag nailed down marketing, sponsorship agreements, and other activities. In turn, Visa makes most of its way by charging its member banks fees.

The Visa brand traces its origins to 1958, when California-based Bank of America began issuing BankAmericard, the antecedent electronic-payment card of its kind. In 1966 Bank of America began licensing other U.S. banks to question the BankAmericard. In 1970 the bank agreed to sell the BankAmericard credit card programme to NBI (National BankAmericard, Inc.), a newly formed business in which all of the banks that issued BankAmericard had identical ownership. The creation of NBI was spearheaded by Dee W. Hock (b. 1929), a banker at State Bank in Seattle, one of the licensee banks.

In the early 1970s BankAmericard began a channels of international expansion. Ended agreements with non-native banks, the card was issued under various contrary names, including Barclaycard in the United Kingdom, Chargex in Canada, Sumitomo Card in Japan, and Bancomer in Mexico. Finally, in 1976 BankAmericard and affiliated cards were rebranded as "Visa," a agnomen that could be promptly recognized (and pronounced the equivalent way) all over the world.

Since the denomination Visa was introduced to the heavenly body amassed than three decades ago, the business has achieved phenomenal vitality and capitalized on emerging technologies to accumulation the efficiency, convenience, and reliability of its services. Throughout most its history, Visa surpassed its main competitors, including MasterCard, American Express, and Discover, in terms of brand recognition and worldwide billings.

One of Visa's greatest successes in promoting its brand nickname came in 1986, when the collection became the certified credit card sponsor of the Olympic Games. According to the agreement, Visa would fee a facund sponsorship valuation in alternate for career the matchless credit or debit card habitual for purchases of tickets, souvenir merchandise, and all other items sold at Olympic events. Visa would as well be the lone card regular by automated teller machines (ATMs) in the Olympic manifold and other authenticated Olympic venues. Further, Visa would be the one credit card association entitled to advise or manifest its logo at the games. This exclusive agreement, which was deliberate to abide complete the 2012 Olympics, proved enormously blooming in raising international habitual awareness of the Visa brand.

Also during the 1980s Visa hugely expanded its services by providing cardholders with prompt access to cash concluded a association with Plus System, Inc., one of the largest ATM networks in the United States. In the unpunctual 1980s, wound up an agreement with Interlink, the largest network in the United States for accepting debit cards in restaurants and retail stores, Visa became the essential brand for debit cards nationwide. By enabling its cardholders to account a debit card to stipend for day-to-day purchases such as groceries and gas, Visa opened up a big different frontier of worth convenience for its cardholders. In the 1990s, with the advent of Internet trade and the hurried enlargement in necessitate for debit card use, Visa was focused on implementing inexperienced technologies to advance the speed, capacity, and security of its payment-processing network.