Visa Inc. headquarters at Metro Center in Foster City
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Public | |
Traded as | : V DJIA Component S&P 100 Component S&P 500 Component |
Industry | Financial services |
Founded | 1958 Fresno, California, United States |
(as BankAmericard)
Founder | Dee Hock |
Headquarters | Foster City,California, United States |
Area served
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Worldwide |
Key people
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Al Kelly (CEO) |
Products | Credit cards, payment systems |
Revenue | US$13.88 billion (2015) |
US$9.06 billion (2015) | |
US$6.32 billion (2015) | |
Total assets | US$40.23 billion (2015) |
Total equity | US$29.84 billion (2015) |
Number of employees
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11,300 (2015) |
Website | visa |
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. It facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly through Visa-branded credit cards and debit cards. 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 with a total volume of US$6.8 trillion.
Visa has operations across all continents worldwide with the exception of Antarctica. Nearly all Visa transactions worldwide are processed through VisaNet at one of two secure facilities: Operations Center East, located somewhere near Ashburn, Virginia; and Operations Center Central, located somewhere near Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Both data centers 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. Every transaction is checked past 500 variables including 100 fraud-detection parameters - such as the location and spending habits of the customer and the merchant's location - before being accepted.