Credit Cards

Visa is a merchant processing system, partnered with financial institutions around the world. It is the financial institutions who issue Visa credit cards who decide on the annual fee of the card, the late fees and the rewards programs, not Visa themselves. Visa has one of the widest worldwide acceptance rates of any credit card merchant, having been in operation since 1958, when it was called Bank Americard. As a result Visa is accepted in over 200 countries making it easy to spend safely whether you are spending around the corner or around the world.Visa is also aware of your awareness of credit card security and identity theft and so have recently added the Verified by Visa feature to their cards. When your bank issues you a Visa card, you can register with Verified by Visa and create a secondary password. Then, when you use your Visa credit or debit card with participating online retailers, they will ask for this second identification password, and will verify your password with Visa before processing the payment – someone using your card number fraudulently wouldn’t have this additional password, and the payment would not be authorized. MasterCard is also a merchant processing system which allows banks all over the world to issue credit to their customers.Beginning operations in the mid-1960s, MasterCard is slightly behind the game compared to Visa. However, it is still one of the most widely accepted credit cards in the world, and there are now few places which accept a Visa card, which don’t accept a MasterCard. American Express operates their credit cards in over 130 countries, but they are often seen as being far less accepted than MasterCard or Visa. This is often because American Express charges a higher merchant fee to the merchants who accept your payment on an American Express credit card and where a MasterCard or Visa card merchant fee is around 1% of the transaction cost, American Express can be as much as 4%. American Express has invested a lot of clever time and money into making their brand synonymous with prestige and affluence, using celebrities in their advertising and promoting not just a card, but a lifestyle. As a result, they have attracted a lot of prestigious and affluent credit card customers.