Both VISA and Mastercard were started by big banks. Banks like Citibank(member in both Allainces), Bank of America(member in Visa only Purchased MBNA got voting rights in Mastercard),Chase(member in both banks as they purchased Bank one original member in Visa),HSBC(Mastercard Member only), Deutsche bank (member in VISA) amoung other large international banks are the original members. They allowed smaller banks to join the allainces back in the mid 80's on the condition these other banks stop issueing American Express cards as many smaller banks used to issue co-branded American Express cards in the early to mid 80's. That is whole bais for American Express current lawsuit against both Visa and Mastercard and larger controlling members of the 2 credit card allainces.

Only orginal member banks have ownership interest in the Visa and Mastercard networks and voting rights. All other member allanice banks more or less agree to terms of the allanice set up.

The Visa card was originally set up as the BankAmericard as a Bank of America exclusive card, later, to compete with Mastercard's forerunner, Mastercharge (which was started by a 4 bank consortium in California and then expanded to other banks in the west), it opened up membership to other banks and changed its name to Visa. MC and Visa share the same basic infrastructure and charge the same fees, which is why you usually see them both here in the States.

One other tidbit: there are quite a few places throughout Europe that take Visa/MC that haven't ever updated their credit card stickers in the shops, so you see that they take BankAmericards and Mastercharges (the logos are very similar to today's logos).

I apologize for my misinformation. :o

I have no idea where I heard that Visa bought MC or why I believed it. :D

you are forgiven

They are all listed on my website in the Credit Card section.

Just ran out of cash on my last day in Buenos Aires, Argentina so I decided not to withdraw money from an ATM and pay with my credit card for anything I needed the last day. I went to the airport (EZE) and thought that I could pay the airport tax with my Mastercard. To my surprise, the airport (Argentina 2000) only takes Visa and American Express and I only had my MasterCard in my pocket... Next time I will take my Visa also!!

Are you sure about that? I used my Mastercard there in March 2005. Maybe there are multiple places to pay it and some take different CC? Strange though...

Moral of the story - always have both on you... which really begs the question, why care which of the two is "best" - you'll need them both at some point so you might as well get both. The real question comes down to of the Visa and MC cards out there, which offer the best "advantages" - and then get them both!

I can only pay for my NFL season tickets with a Visa card - NOT Mastercard. It must be a special licensing agreement. The funny thing is, my season tickets are for the Browns, which are owned by the Lerner family, which made their money by building the MBNA credit card empire. MBNA and the Browns also share some corporate functions like private jets and cross-promotions. I find it ironic that I can't pay for my Browns season tickets with my MBNA (amtrak) Mastercard.

Totally shure. I even went to the central boot and they only had the VISA and AMERICAN EXPRESS logos glued to the glass... The lady told me that they don't take MasterCard due to promotional reasons (don't know the reasons and didn't care to ask since I was late) but fortunately, my cousin was traveling with me on a TACA flight and he paid my Tax fee with his VISA card...

"The official credit card of the ______" is probably the only situation where you'll run into a US merchant that takes Visa and not M/C. With the NFL, Olympics, etc., they have a special marketing agreement where they only take Visa.

I work in the industry so maybe I can shed some light:

1. Visa and MasterCard are both associations of banks that give license to their members to allow them to issue the cards and use the association acceptance networks.

2. MasterCard recently became a publicly traded company while Visa is still fully owned by the member banks. The member banks are large shareholders and have voting rights in the publicly traded MasterCard

3. The acceptance rates on a global basis for both Visa and MC are about the same. However, as others have pointed out those acceptance rates may vary by region. MasterCard is making a push in Europe where Visa has tended to have an advantage. MasterCard has an advantage in most of Latin America. There really is little to no difference in the US. Moral - have one of each since there is little difference

4. The associations often provide marketing or sponsorship dollars to large organisations or companies for exlcusive acceptance rights - ie. the NFL and the Olympics only accept Visa.

5. The same can be said for certain banks who tend to issue a majority of their cards with one or the other association

6. AMEX is a separate acceptance network which is wholly owned and controlled by AMEX. Same for the old Diners (before the deal with MC) and Discover.

Are you sure that it had its IPO already? I thought that everyone was still waiting.

The IPO date is still to be determined.

There's some controversy over a charity MC is setting up. This charity will own a signifigant chunk of the new stock. They say they're just being generous, but there's suspicion that it's just to dilute the voting power of the remaining shareholders.