Visa Inc. is a multinational payment services company that processes electronic money transfers through its credit, debit, and prepaid cards. Visa is one of the most valuable companies globally, and boasts of having processed over $6 trillion USD as of 2014. Founded in 1958, the company is headquartered in California, USA.
Mastercard Inc. is a payment facilitating company that offers transaction processing and bookings related payments services. The company’s primary offering is to process payments between banks and card issuers that use Mastercard debit, credit, and prepaid cards. Founded in 1966, the company is headquartered in New York, USA.
According to recent reports, Visa and Mastercard have reached an antitrust settlement of about $30 billion USD, to reduce transaction fees on their credit and debit cards. The report further mentions that financial institutions have pointed out the high fees that are applied when customers use Mastercard or Visa cards. With this settlement, both companies have also agreed to reduce their fees by 0.04 points over the next 3 years.
