Company Overview
Highlights
Operates 30 offices globally.
Owned by 16,600 member financial institutions.
Processed 50 billion transactions in 2007.
More than 2 billion Visa cards are in use globally.
Went public in March 2008.
In 1958, Bank of America introduced a revolutionary idea—a bank card, or rather, a Bank Americard. In 1976, the company became Visa, which then became Visa Inc. upon the restructuring of several Visa organizations. In March 2008, the company went public, completing the largest initial public offering in U.S. History at $17.9 billion.
The 16,600 banks that own Visa are the actual points of service which offer the cards and financial services to consumers and merchants. In addition to credit cards, the company offers debit cards (one of its faster-growing areas of business), online payment services, smart cards (cards digitally encoded with information and able to store value, much like gift cards), and traveler’s checks. Visa cardholders can access money at more than a million ATMs around the world.