Visa Credit Card Company - Credit Card Companies

Visa Credit Card Company

Visa Incorporated, widely known as Visa, or Visa Credit Card Company, is comprised of 21,000 financial institutions that market Visa products, among which are credit and debit cards. Started and based in San Francisco, California, in the United States, this venture started out as Visa International Service Association, and later on changed its name because of the company's restructuring plan.

The Visa credit card company would not have been created if not for the BankAmericard. It was in 1958 that the Bank of America started its BankAmericard credit card program. This started in Fresno, California, and had the goal of catering to everyone in that state. In 1965, though, the bank started doing licensing agreements with other banks that are outside California. The 11 years that followed saw the formation of a banking network that backed the BankAmericard system throughout the United States. During this time, licenses for this system also began its implementation in other countries such as Canada, France, and the United Kingdom.

In Canada, various banks such as the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Toronto-Dominion bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia, and Banque Canadienne Nationale took on the name of Chargex and issued cards under that name. In France, BankAmericard cards were under the name Carte Bleue, while in the United Kingdom, Barclayard was the sole BankAmericard issuer for years.

The Bank of America relinquished their control over the BankAmericard Program in 1970, thus giving way for the other BankAmericard issuers to take control of the program, which spawned the creation of National BankAmericard Inc. This corporation became responsible for promoting, managing, and developing the BankAmericard system in the United States, while the Bank of America still continued to support and issue the international licenses. During 1974, IBANCO, which is a multinational corporation, was created for the purpose of managing BankAmericard's international program.

The directors of IBANCO decided that it would be better if the international networks of the BankAmericard-- Barclayard, Carte Bleue, and Chargex-- were brought together under one name. Other countries were hesitant to issue cards that can be associated with the Bank of America. This is why the licenses became united under the name of Visa in 1977. This term was conceptualized by Dee Hock, the founder of the company. He picked the name because he thought that this word can easily be recognizerd in a multitude of languages in various countries, and that it also denotes acceptance universally. Today, this term can also stand for Visa International Service Association.