About Visa.com

Visa is a ™® of Visa, Inc.


Visa Inc. (NYSE: V), commonly called VISA, is a multinational corporation based in San Francisco, California, USA. The company operates the world's largest retail electronic payment network, managing payments among financial institutions, merchants, consumers, businesses and government entities.

Before Visa Inc's IPO in early 2008, it was operated as a cooperative of some 21,000 financial institutions that issued and marketed Visa products including credit and debit cards.


In 2006, according to The Nilson Report, Visa held 44% of the credit card market share and 48% of the debit card market share in the United States.


VISA.COM is their official website. Even though the service is offered by thousands of banks, the end result is standardized for consumers by Visa. Two protocols are used, depending upon the type of card marketed, often called "credit" and "debit."


CreditCards: Credit/Debit?


The names of the two protocols use the arbitrary "debit" and "credit" from accounting meaning left and right, and they originally had the meanings (and still do to many people) that with credit the cardholder pays later for the purchase, and with debit the cardholder pays immediately.


The truth today is that they are merely two different protocols, with which there is still considerable confusion, and even lawsuits over the definitions of products for purposes of antitrust law. Banks can use independent methods to actually recover the money paid for purchases, regardless of which protocol is used. For example, the debit protocol can be used to incur a debt to the bank, and the credit protocol can be used to take money from a checking account.


The debit protocol involves using the card at a point of sale terminal (POS) or automated teller machine where the PLUS or Interlink logo is shown, with a Visa card that has the PLUS or Interlink logo on the back of the card. A PIN (personal identification number, known by its acronym) is used to identify the cardholder. The money is deducted from the attached checking account or prepaid account (which is similar with no paper check-writing capability).



The credit protocol involves using the card at a POS or a banking center where the Visa logo is shown. The cardholder's signature is generally used for identification, often together with the cardholder's civic registration number or ID card/passport. Holders of any Visa card may use the credit protocol even if the card is marketed as a debit card or prepaid card (basically since it has the Visa logo on the front of the card). One source of confusion is the merchant may ask "debit or credit?" even though the words are not defined that way in most dictionaries and even though the card may say "debit card" right on it, and still be available for "credit" transactions.


In this way it is a misnomer that the credit cards are only for loans or that the debit protocol is only for checking accounts. Banks actually choose various backend methods of handling the accounts, making "debit" a generic synonym for "Plus/Interlink" (and the equivalent competitive networks), and "credit" a generic synonym for "Visa" (and MasterCard, American Express, Discover Card, which have similar systems). VISA.CA is the Canadian version of Visa's website.


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