Group - Visa Inc

Visa Inc. (NYSE: V), commonly referred to as VISA (Visa International Service Association), 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. In mid-September 1958, Bank of America launched its pioneering BankAmericard credit card program in Fresno, California with an initial mailing of 60,000 unsolicited credit cards. The original idea was the brainchild of BofA's in-house product development think tank, the Customer Services Research Group, and its leader, Joseph Williams, who convinced senior BofA executives in 1956 to let him pursue what became the world's first successful credit card "drop," or mass mailing of unsolicited credit cards (that is, actual working cards, not mere applications) to a large population.