Visa

Visa Inc. was founded in 1958 by Dee Hock, who later developed it into a cooperative and then a publicly traded corporation. Visa is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker V since its IPO in March 2008, which was one of the largest IPOs in U.S. history at the time. Visa is one of the largest payment technology companies in the world by market capitalization.

Visa operates a global electronic payments network — VisaNet — that processes credit, debit, and prepaid card transactions between cardholders, merchants, and financial institutions. Visa does not issue cards or extend credit directly; it functions as a network intermediary, authorizing and settling transactions. Its customers are financial institutions (banks and credit unions) that issue Visa-branded cards and merchants that accept them. Visa earns revenue primarily through service fees, data processing fees, and international transaction fees.

Visa's core product is the VisaNet payment processing network, which handles authorization, clearing, and settlement. The company also operates Visa Direct, a real-time push payments platform used for person-to-person transfers, gig economy payouts, and business disbursements. Visa B2B Connect is a non-card multilateral payment network for cross-border business-to-business transactions. On the security side, Visa offers tokenization services and the Visa Advanced Authorization fraud-scoring product. Visa also maintains the Visa Developer Platform, which provides APIs for fintech developers to build payment integrations.

Visa's primary competitor is Mastercard, which operates a nearly identical network model. American Express and Discover operate as both network and card issuer (closed-loop model), competing in overlapping but structurally different ways. Visa and Mastercard together dominate global card network volume. Regulatory scrutiny of interchange fees and network duopoly dynamics is an ongoing headwind in the U.S., EU, and other markets. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa related to its debit network practices. Visa had announced an acquisition of Plaid in 2020 for $5.3 billion, but abandoned the deal in 2021 following DOJ antitrust opposition. Visa acquired Currencycloud in 2021 and has made several other fintech acquisitions over the years.

Visa maintains an office in Israel, with operations focused on R&D and technology. Israel is one of Visa's active engineering and innovation hubs, consistent with the company's broader strategy of establishing technology centers in markets with strong software talent. Visa Israel has hired for roles in software engineering, data science, and cybersecurity.