Logos Quiz Level 3-34 Answers

About Visa, Inc.

Visa is a financial services company based in California in the United States. Visa is primarily a credit/debit card company. They were introduced in 1958 by Bank of America as BankAmericard. The cards were mailed to 60,000 households in Fresno, California. These mailings were unsolicited and Bank of America was not the first bank to attempt to start a credit card company. It was, however, the first successful credit card. There were two million BankAmericards in use by October 1959, which were accepted by about 20,000 businesses. Although this card was successful in terms of adoption, the financial news was less good. 22% of accounts went unpaid. Bank of America had expected less than 5% to be delinquent. They had also not anticipated the amount of fraud that would occur. Because the cardholder agreement held the customer liable for fraud, many people rebelled against the credit card.

Once the men who created the original idea left Bank of America, they were able to salvage the credit card idea. They were also able to expand BankAmericard into more states than California. BankAmericard become an independent and functional entity in 1970. They changed their name to Visa in 1975. Today, Visa offers credit cards, debit cards, prepaid cards and payWave, a contactless payment option. They have also introduced Visa Checkout, an online payment system meant to make online transactions safer for consumers. Visa has been involved in multiple antitrust lawsuits since the 1990s.