Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
“Acquiring Discover would give it access to a credit card network of 305 million cardholders, adding to its base of more than 100 million customers.”
yeah, that was surprising. Does Discover exist in markets outside the US? Or how do they end up with 305 million cardholders? Even if they counted accounts and not unique human beings having one or more cards, that is a lot more than I would have expected as someone who never had a Discover card and can’t remember the last time I saw someone use a Discover card.
Discover has partnerships outside of the US, the largest of which is with China's UnionPay. Over 200m UnionPay cards have been issued outside of China, and they're probably processed by Discover for transactions outside of China.