VISA or Visa International Service Association is perhaps the most popular and trusted ‘brand’ amongst credit cards. There popularity as credit card certifying company can be understood by the fact that 21000 financial institutions have formed a joint venture with Visa Inc. for issuing and marketing credit cards; which however extends to collaboration for debit cards and prepaid cards as well.
Operating from San Francisco in California, Visa has revolutionized the credit system in collaboration with several financial institutions all over the globe. Even though your credit cards are issued by a certain bank or financial institution, they have to follow standardized rules of operation to be certified by Visa. More appropriately, Visa Credit Cards are used at a POS (Point of Sale) Terminal or ATM or banking centre where the Visa logo is displayed.
VISA Guidelines
Visa maneuvers the world’s largest retail electronic payment network, managing payments amongst consumers, merchants, businesses, government entities and financial institutions. It has incorporated certain guidelines for securing transactions both for the banks collaborating with them as well as the consumers availing credit cards from Visa.
· Compulsory Identification of cardholders to ensure foolproof security.
· Substantial co-operation of banks to assist in fraud protection.
· Standardizing the identification and fraud protection process and making it non-discriminatory.
· Merchants accepting Visa cannot claim any surcharge on any transaction through Visa credit card. However, this rule is not applicable to the consumers from U.K and Australia.
A commendable milestone in Visa’s collaboration history is JP Morgan Chase surfacing as the world’s largest Visa Credit Card issuer. This status is however, achieved after JP Morgan Chase’s acquisition of Bank One, which was the largest Visa Credit Card issuer in the recent past.
Visa expects major restructuring in credit card industry
In a recent development, Visa Inc, which is the world’s largest payment network, has indicated major restructuring in credit card industry citing reports, suggesting U.S. legislation curbing certain practices by credit card companies. The bill which is expected to be effective from February 2010 will restrict credit card issuers’ capability of raising interest rates on cardholders’ existing balances, to impose penalties on consumers or to charge certain fees.
Although, one believes that it would oblige the credit card industry to restructure with the shrinking of revenue expectations, Visa Inc. is partly shielded from the global credit crisis because it primarily processes transactions rather than lending funds.