page_title: Visa Inc.
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Visa Inc. / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Old sign, "Your Bankamericard Welcome Here". Photo by Infrogmation of New Orleans, February, 2018. Free reuse with author attribution in accordance with any of the licenses listed by the author/photographer. Reuse without photo attribution is a violation of copyright. This work includes material that may be protected as a trademark in some jurisdictions. If you want to use it, you have to ensure that you have the legal right to do so and that you do not infringe any trademark rights. See our general disclaimer. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information.
context_page_description: Visa Inc. is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. It facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly through Visa-branded credit cards, debit cards and prepaid cards. 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. In 2015, the Nilson Report, a publication that tracks the credit card industry, found that Visa's global network processed 100 billion transactions during 2014 with a total volume of US$6.8 trillion.
  It was launched in September 1958 by Bank of America as the BankAmericard credit card program. In response to competitor Master Charge, BofA began to license the BankAmericard program to other financial institutions in 1966. By 1970, BofA gave up direct control of the BankAmericard program, forming a consortium with the other various BankAmericard issuer banks to take over its management. It was then renamed Visa in 1976.
context_section_description: On September 18, 1958, Bank of America (BofA) officially launched its BankAmericard credit card program in Fresno, California.  In the weeks leading up to the launch of BankAmericard, BofA had saturated Fresno mailboxes with an initial mass mailing (or "drop", as they came to be called) of 65,000 unsolicited credit cards. BankAmericard was the brainchild of BofA's in-house product development think tank, the Customer Services Research Group, and its leader, Joseph P. Williams. Williams convinced senior BofA executives in 1956 to let him pursue what became the world's first successful mass mailing of unsolicited credit cards (actual working cards, not mere applications) to a large population.
  Williams' pioneering accomplishment was that he brought about the successful implementation of the all-purpose credit card (in the sense that his project was not canceled outright), not in coming up with the idea. By the mid-1950s, the typical middle-class American already maintained revolving credit accounts with several different merchants, which was clearly inefficient and inconvenient due to the need to carry so many cards and pay so many separate bills each month. The need for a unified financial instrument was already evident to the American financial services industry, but no one could figure out how to do it. There were already charge cards like Diners Club (which had to be paid in full at the end of each billing cycle), and "by the mid-1950s, there had been at least a dozen attempts to create an all-purpose credit card." However, these prior attempts had been carried out by small banks which lacked the resources to make them work. Williams and his team studied these failures carefully and believed they could avoid replicating those banks' mistakes; they also studied existing revolving credit operations at Sears and Mobil Oil to learn why they were successful. Fresno was selected for its population of 250,000 (big enough to make a credit card work, small enough to control initial startup cost), BofA's market share of that population (45%), and relative isolation, to control public relations damage in case the project failed.
  The 1958 test at first went smoothly, but then BofA panicked when it confirmed rumors that another bank was about to initiate its own drop in San Francisco, BofA's home market. By March 1959, drops began in San Francisco and Sacramento; by June, BofA was dropping cards in Los Angeles; by October, the entire state of California had been saturated with over 2 million credit cards and BankAmericard was being accepted by 20,000 merchants. However, the program was riddled with problems, as Williams (who had never worked in a bank's loan department) had been too earnest and trusting in his belief in the basic goodness of the bank's customers, and he resigned in December 1959. 22% of accounts were delinquent, not the 4% expected, and police departments around the state were confronted by numerous incidents of the brand new crime of credit card fraud. Both politicians and journalists joined the general uproar against Bank of America and its newfangled credit card, especially when it was pointed out that the cardholder agreement held customers liable for all charges, even those resulting from fraud. BofA officially lost over $8.8 million on the launch of BankAmericard, but when the full cost of advertising and overhead was included, the bank's actual loss was probably around $20 million.
  However, after Williams and some of his closest associates left, BofA management realized that BankAmericard was salvageable. They conducted a "massive effort" to clean up after Williams, imposed proper financial controls, published an open letter to 3 million households across the state apologizing for the credit card fraud and other issues their card raised and eventually were able to make the new financial instrument work.  By May 1961, the BankAmericard program became profitable for the first time. At the time, BofA deliberately kept this information secret and allowed then-widespread negative impressions to linger in order to
caption: Old "Your BankAmericard Welcome Here" sign
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot ELPH 350 HS", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Photos 2.0", "Image DateTime": "2018:02:25 14:53:29", "Image ExifOffset": "248", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/640", "EXIF FNumber": "18/5", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Standard Output Sensitivity and Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2018:02:25 14:53:29", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2018:02:25 14:53:29", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "149/16", "EXIF ApertureValue": "59/16", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "59/16", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "9/2", "EXIF SubSecTime": "47", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "47", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "47", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1900", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1469", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "232751/11", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "486000/23", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}