Visa

Visa operates one of the world's largest payment networks. It does not issue cards or lend money itself. Banks and other firms issue cards under the Visa name, and the network passes payment data between merchants and those issuers.

The company traces its beginnings to the BankAmericard program that Bank of America launched in 1958. The banks that licensed it formed a separate organization in 1970, which was renamed Visa in 1976. Visa went public in 2008, and the headquarters is in Foster City, California.

Its products include credit, debit and prepaid cards, along with Visa Direct for money transfers and tools for fraud checks and tokenization. Visa earns fees on transactions and on data processing. Regulators and merchants have challenged the fees it charges for card acceptance, and the United States Department of Justice sued the company in 2024 over its debit card practices. Ryan McInerney is chief executive. Visa operates in more than two hundred countries and territories. The company sponsors events such as the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, and it publishes research on payments and spending.