Visa Inc. (/ˈviːzə/ or /ˈviːsə/) (also known as Visa, stylized as VISA) is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Foster City, California, United States.[5] It facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly through Visa-branded credit cards, debit cards and prepaid cards.[6] 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.[7]

It was launched in September 1958 by Bank of America (BofA) as the BankAmericard credit card program.[1] 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 consortium 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; Highlands Ranch, Colorado; London, England; and 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.[11][7][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] Because UnionPay's size is based primarily on the size of its domestic market, Visa is dominant in the rest of the world outside of China, with 50% market share of global card payments minus China.