Visa Inc

Visa Inc. is a leading American multinational corporation specializing in payment card services, with its headquarters situated in San Francisco, California. The company facilitates electronic funds transfers globally, primarily through Visa-branded credit cards, debit cards, and prepaid cards.

Visa itself does not issue cards, extend credit, or establish rates and fees for consumers; instead, it provides financial institutions with Visa-branded payment products that these institutions utilize to offer credit, debit, prepaid, and cash access programs to their clients.

Founded in 1958 by Bank of America as the BankAmericard credit card program, Visa evolved in response to the rise of competitor Master Charge. In 1966, BofA began licensing the BankAmericard program to other financial institutions. By 1970, BofA relinquished direct control over the BankAmericard program, forming a cooperative with various BankAmericard issuer banks to assume its management. This cooperative was renamed Visa in 1976.

Virtually all Visa transactions worldwide are processed through the company’s proprietary VisaNet at one of four secure data centers located in Ashburn, Virginia, and Highlands Ranch, Colorado, in the United States; London, England; and Singapore. These facilities are fortified against natural disasters, crime, and terrorism, can operate autonomously from each other and external utilities if required, and are capable of handling up to 30,000 simultaneous transactions along with 100 billion computations per second.

As of 2015, Visa became the world's second-largest card payment organization, having been surpassed by China UnionPay in terms of the annual value of card payments processed and the number of cards issued. However, since UnionPay's size is mainly derived from its domestic market in China, Visa remains the dominant bankcard firm outside of China, holding a substantial 50% market share of total card payments globally.