94. What do you know about MasterCard?

MasterCard is the second-largest global payment solutions company in the world. It provides a variety of services to support credit, debit and related card solutions of over 24,000 financial institutions globally. MasterCard-- MasterCard is a global bank card payments brand and network that provides it’s services to banks and merchants as follows:

• Franchisor: Through the thousands of financial institutions that are MasterCard’s customers, the company markets a strong portfolio of brands and products worldwide, including MasterCard, Maestro®, Cirrus® and MasterCard® With these, MasterCard offers a network of more than 24 million acceptance locations around the world and, in many cases, guarantees payment through its system. (It does not, however, issue cards, set annual fees, determine annual percentage rates on cards, or solicit merchants to accept cards. MasterCard’s customers, a myriad of financial institutions worldwide, manage the relationships with their cardholders and with merchants.)

• Processor: MasterCard’s processing enables efficient commerce on a global scale.

MasterCard Acquirer-- A member that signs a MasterCard merchant agreement or disburses currency to a MasterCard cardholder in a cash disbursement, and directly or indirectly enters the resulting transaction receipt into interchange.

MasterCard Issuer-- A member that issues MasterCard cards.

The company processes more than 20 billion transactions every year, and generates revenue by charging fees for transaction processing and other services. The company's brands include MasterCard, Maestro and Cirrus.

95. What do you know about Visa?

Visa is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, banks, governments and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments. It operates processing networks, VisaNet, which offers fraud protection for consumers and assured payment for merchants. The company owns, manages and promotes a portfolio of well-known, widely-accepted payment brands, including Visa, Visa Electron, PLUS and Interlink, which it license to its clients for use in their payment programs. It offers a wide range of branded payments product platforms, which its clients, primarily financial institutions, use to develop and offer credit, debit, prepaid and cash access programs, as well as digital, mobile and e-Commerce platforms for their customers.. It invests in new services and processing platforms to facilitate more convenient and innovative payment methods, such as mobile payments, money transfer and e-Commerce and continually improve the speed, efficiency, security and performance of its network and payments services to enhance the reliability of its global processing infrastructure and protect the security of cardholder information

Visa and MasterCard birthed the first general service credit cards in 1966. First, Bank of America created a division franchising a card that later became Visa. At about the same time, a group of banks created a member-owned association, the InterBank Card Association, which is now MasterCard Worldwide. Both organizations developed an open-loop system that enabled banks to cooperate seamlessly on fund transfers. For much of the groups' histories, financial institutions that wished to issue a card had to select one of the two. But rules changes now allow them issue Visa and MasterCard in both networks.

Visa does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers; rather, Visa provides financial institutions with Visa-branded payment products that they then use to offer credit, debit, prepaid and cash-access programs to their customers. Visa's network connects thousands of financial institutions worldwide. In 2013 Visa held a 44% market share of the credit card marketplace/ Visa is the largest global electronic payment solutions company in the world. It provides a wide range of products and services to support the credit, debit and related card solutions of institutions in over 200 countries. The company processes more than 60 billion transactions every year, and generates revenue by charging fees for transaction processing and other services.