Long before fintech became a buzzword and digital payment systems made their first appearance, Visa was already connecting the world with its ubiquitous card: accepted nearly everywhere and allowing users ready access to their cash. After many failed attempts to introduce a unified all-purpose payment card, Bank of America solved the riddle with its revolutionary – in today’s parlance: disruptive – BankAmericard which in 1976 became Visa. The secret to Visa’s enduring success was the original issuers willingness to license its product to other banks and allow its rebranding – first outside the US and later also domestically.
Now detached from its parent, Visa has become one of the world’s largest financial services providers with twin data centres in the US able to jointly process 30,000 transactions simultaneously and perform some one hundred billion computations per second. Visa unequalled IT backbone checks over 500 variables in each transactions it processes, including more than one hundred parameters to detect fraud.
Visa is not just big; the company is extremely agile as well, driving developments in fintech and adopting innovative technologies that further improve the card’s convenience to holders and merchants alike. In 2014, the company partnered with Apple to develop the iPhone Wallet app which enables users to link their Visa and other debit and credit cards into a single payment platform.
The CFI.co judging panel considers Visa a textbook case of how to drive corporate growth through the decentralisation of operations whilst maintaining a tight grip on the underlying processes. The company has also pioneered a way to benefit massively from the reach and reputation of its licensees. The judges are pleased to name Visa winner of the 2018 Best Branding Card Services Global Award.