Visa
A huge portion of the world’s population uses their products on a daily basis (you might say Visa is… everywhere people want to be), but very few know the amazing story behind how that came to be.
To paraphrase Visa founder Dee Hock, how many of you know Visa? Great, all of you. Now, how many of you know how it started? Or, for that matter, who started it? Who runs and governs it? Where is it headquartered? What’s its business model?
For the 11th largest market cap company in the world, Visa’s history and strategy is almost shockingly unknown. A huge portion of the world’s population uses their products on a daily basis (you might say Visa is… everywhere people want to be), but very few know the amazing story behind how that came to be. Or why Visa continues to be one of the most incredible and incredibly durable business franchises of all-time. (50%+ net income margins!! On $30B of revenue!)
Kyle’s Rating: 9/10
Ben and David masterfully transform what could have been a dry discussion of payment processing into a captivating tale of nearly impossible organizational engineering, revealing how Dee Hock's "democratic communist capitalism" and a series of wild gambles—from Bank of America's chaotic Fresno "Drop" to theatrical Sausalito summit meetings with gold cufflinks—created the invisible infrastructure that powers $14 trillion in annual commerce. The hosts brilliantly illuminate how we went from mailing 65,000 unsolicited credit cards and losing $20 million to fraud, to building an unbreakable five-sided network that most people use daily yet know almost nothing about. This episode exemplifies Acquired at its best: taking something we completely take for granted and unpacking the extraordinary sequence of technological innovation, regulatory maneuvering, and sheer audacity that brought it into existence.
Company Overview
Company Name: Visa Inc.
Founding Year: 1970
Headquarters Location: San Mateo, California
Core Business: Visa's core business is operating a global payments network that connects issuing banks, acquiring banks, merchants, and consumers, enabling seamless electronic transactions without extending credit or bearing risk itself.
Significance: Its significance lies in powering ubiquitous commerce, facilitating $14 trillion in annual volume and becoming the 11th most valuable company worldwide through network effects and technological innovation.
Timeline
1958: Bank of America launches the "Drop" in Fresno, California, mailing 65,000 unsolicited BankAmericard credit cards to customers, marking the first scaled bank-issued credit card program.
1959-1961: Program expands statewide in California, signing 20,000 merchants and 2 million cardholders; achieves profitability by 1961 after initial fraud losses of $20 million.
1966: Bank of America franchises BankAmericard to other U.S. banks and internationally (e.g., Barclays in the UK), creating a network of hundreds of banks.
1968: Franchisee banks demand a summit in Columbus, Ohio; Dee Hock forms a committee to redesign the system, leading to the creation of National BankAmericard Inc. (NBI).
1970: NBI officially forms as a for-profit, non-stock membership corporation owned by member banks; gains DOJ approval for antitrust exemption.
1972: International BankAmericard Co. (IBANCO) forms to expand globally, including banks in Japan, Europe, and Latin America.
1973: Launches BASE I, the first computerized authorization system, enabling instant approvals via a centralized data center.
1974: Introduces BASE II for electronic settlement, reducing processing time from weeks to overnight.
1976: Rebrands to Visa, standardizing the blue-white-gold bands and name for global appeal; cardholders grow 45% in the first year post-rebrand.
1979: Digitizes point-of-sale with magnetic stripes and terminals (e.g., Verifone), enabling full electronic transactions and reducing fraud by 82% in pilots.
1984: Dee Hock leaves as CEO amid tensions with banks over expansion (e.g., debit cards).
1986: Becomes the first global Olympic sponsor for $17 million, launching "It's Everywhere You Want to Be" campaign positioning against American Express.
2008: Goes public in the largest U.S. IPO at the time ($18 billion raised), valued at $90 billion; banks monetize shares amid financial crisis.
2023: Processes $14 trillion in volume, 190 billion transactions, with 4.1 billion cards in circulation.
Narrative
Prior to credit cards, U.S. payments relied on cash or checks, both cumbersome. Checks, dating to the 1800s, involved physical transport (e.g., Pony Express), delaying settlements and incurring discounts (5%-7%) for processing risks and costs—essentially early interchange. No Federal Reserve until 1913 meant fragmented clearing; even after, individual couriers handled checks until ACH in the 1970s batched them daily.
Charge accounts evolved as solutions: merchants kept ledgers for regulars, tabbing purchases for monthly settlement, avoiding check hassles. Gas stations like Standard Oil issued chain-wide cards (1939: 250,000 unsolicited). Local retailers pooled for shared cards, but scale bred competition, limiting growth. Diners Club (1950) created an independent network for Manhattan restaurants/hotels, charging 7% merchant fees plus cardholder fees—focusing on business diners for prestige ("they know me here"). American Express, starting as express mail in 1850 (by Wells and Fargo), pivoted to traveler's checks, then charge cards in 1958, leveraging corporate ties to sign 700,000 members quickly. These were closed-loop: issuers handled everything, but lacked credit extension.
It’s against this backdrop in 1958 that Bank of America mailed 65,000 unsolicited BankAmericards to Fresno customers, igniting mass credit. From here the narrative divides into two chapters.
Chapter 1: Bank of America's dominance. As California's consumer bank (renamed from Bank of Italy, serving immigrants), BofA innovated amid interstate bans, holding massive share (e.g., 25% of Fresno). The 1958 "Drop" bundled charge convenience with lending: unsolicited cards offered revolving credit, streamlining BofA's appliance/mortgage loans. Losses mounted ($20M fraud, 22% delinquency), but scale absorbed it; profitability hit by 1961, with 2M cards. Franchising (1966) exported this, but exposed chaos: no interchange standards, manual drafts.
Chapter 2: Dee Hock's revolution. A rural Utah outsider, Hock seized the 1968 Columbus summit, proposing NBI (1970)—a democratic, member-owned entity. DOJ exempted it for consumer benefit. IBANCO (1972) globalized, via Hock's dramatics (e.g., Sausalito cufflinks). Rebranding to Visa (1976) unified, sparking growth. Hock's ouster (1984) stemmed from debit clashes—banks guarded deposits.
Visa is socio-technical: organizational genius (democratic communism) met tech prowess. It created three technological innovations:
BASE I (1973) digitized authorizations, replacing phone chains with telecom-linked computers for instant approvals, building Bay Area data centers. (
BASE II (1974) automated settlements, batching overnight vs. weeks, saving $15M year-one.
Mag-stripe/terminals (1979) digitized POS, slashing fraud 82%, enabling zero-marginal-cost scale. Built in-house after RFP failures, using CompuServe bandwidth, these created infinite, reliable throughput (8,600/sec today).
The Drop
Bank of America's "Drop" mailed 65,000 unsolicited BankAmericards to Fresno customers, igniting mass credit. Chaos followed: unaware recipients misused cards; merchants, uneducated, faced fraud; BofA lost $20M initially, with 22% delinquency—five times prior rates.
Yet it combined three crucial elements:
Charge card convenience (like Diners/Amex for multi-merchant use without cash/checks)
Consumer lending (revolving credit vs. one-off loans for appliances);
Issued by your bank (leveraging existing relationships for trust/scale, unlike retailer cards).
This bundled convenience—frictionless purchases—and credit: pay full at month-end or roll into loans. BofA streamlined operations, retaining funds intra-network (often same-bank parties). Amid optimism, it fueled debt-as-growth, but unsecured risks amplified defaults. Expansion statewide signed 20,000 merchants/2M cards, proving scale's power despite pitfalls. The Drop was a "wild" innovation that birthed modern credit cards.
Sausalito Meetings
Post-Columbus (1968), Hock's committee convened in Sausalito, crafting NBI's guidelines:
Ownership via irrevocable participation rights (proportional to volume, non-transferable—preventing exits eroding value);
Self-organizing democracy (each member votes, 80% threshold for changes—empowering Hock via consensus needs);
Mission: foster trust among competitors for network growth (implicitly banning side-chains, routing all via main network);
Universal modifiable rules (like Constitution, binding future changes).
Incentives: proportional ownership rewards contribution (e.g., 17% volume yields 17% profits); democracy ensures input, reducing defection; exclusivity grows pie (ubiquity > exclusivity); modifiability adapts without fragmentation. This aligned rivals: banks forfeited turf for shared scale, DOJ exempted for consumer gain.
Years later (1972), Hock summoned international holdouts to Sausalito for IBANCO's vote. Nostalgic speech evoked the dream's birthplace, lamenting non-global fate: "Celebrate the chance." Gifts: gold cufflinks, halved globe inscribed "Studium Ad Prosperadum" (will to succeed) and "Voluntas In Conveniendum" (grace to compromise). Emotional ploy reversed holdouts; all joined, birthing global Visa. Ben/David enthuse over Hock's debate flair, securing Sumitomo/Barclays via symbolism—fortune favors bold persuasion.
Legal Structure
Visa began as a for-profit, non-stock membership corporation (NBI/IBANCO)—"reverse holding company" per Hock: members owned proportionally via participation, irrevocable/non-transferable to prevent exits. Democratic: 80% votes modified rules, binding all. DOJ exempted for consumer benefit.
By 2008, amid merchant antitrust suits, Visa IPO'd ($18B raised, $90B valuation—largest U.S. then). Shifted to public stock (A-shares liability-free; B-shares for banks absorbed suits). Banks cashed out amid crisis; Visa gained acquisition currency, talent incentives. Ben/David note: from cooperative to half-trillion juggernaut, eclipsing banks.
The Five-Sided Network
Visa operates a five-sided network: consumers, merchants, issuing banks (card issuers), acquiring banks (merchant banks), and Visa itself. Each earns via fees on a $100 transaction (assume 2% discount: $2 total; ~1.6% interchange to issuer, 0.2% to acquirer, 0.2% to Visa—varies by type/region).
Consumers: Buy goods/services; no direct fee (rewards from issuers). Risk: debt (50% carry balances at 22% interest); earn via convenience/rewards (~$1,100/year average). On $100: pay $100 (rewards offset indirectly).
Merchants: Sell goods; accept cards for sales growth. Risk: fees erode margins (e.g., 2-3% hurts low-margin/low-volume); fraud disputes. Earn: broader customers, guaranteed payment. On $100: receive $98 (lose $2 discount).
Issuing Banks (e.g., Chase): Issue cards, extend credit. Risk: defaults/fraud (unsecured lending). Earn: interchange majority (~$1.60) plus interest (bulk revenue). On $100: ~$1.60, minus rewards/fraud costs.
Acquiring Banks (e.g., Wells Fargo): Onboard merchants, provide terminals. Risk: merchant defaults/operations. Earn: ~$0.20 (split with processors like First Data). On $100: ~$0.20.
Visa Network: Connects all, authorizes/settles. Risk: none (no credit); operational uptime. Earn: ~$0.20 (low-variable-cost). On $100: ~$0.20 profit (98% gross margins).
This amplifies effects: more consumers attract merchants, banks scale adoption. Ben/David note its "unbreakable" moat—harder than two-sided (e.g., Airbnb)—enabling infinite scale, though merchants bear disproportionate capture. (298 words)
Visa and the Olympics
In 1986, the IOC offered global sponsorships—previously local—for $14M to AmEx, their U.S. mainstay. AmEx declined; Visa's CMO John Bennett (ex-AmEx) pounced, paying $17M rights plus $23M media ($40M total, ~$110M today). Exclusive provider at events, Visa trained global attendees on cards, associating prestige.
Campaign: "It's Everywhere You Want to Be" targeted AmEx's smaller network (25% Visa's), counter-positioning against AmEx, showing exotic locales where AmEx failed. - "remember your Visa... they don't take American Express." Positioned Visa upmarket, erasing debt stigma—business travelers used Visa proudly at Olympics. They’ve been the only global payments sponsor for the last 37 years later (the current contract runs through 2032).
The Reverse Robin Hood
Visa's system is regressive: merchants markup prices to cover fees (~2%), subsidizing rewards for affluent card users. Fed Boston study: cash households pay $149 extra annually; card users gain $1,100 rewards. Low-income/cash payers bear costs without benefits; high-spenders (rewards cards) profit. Ben and David critique: "wide-scale bribe" extorting retailers with their money, amplifying inequality—wealthy transact more, capturing disproportionate value.
Notable Facts
Visa is the 11th most valuable company globally, worth more than any bank (including founders like BofA), with 50%+ net margins on $30 billion revenue.
The blue-white-gold bands originated from a BofA designer's Pleasanton hillside view, becoming a universal mark enabling instant recognition.
Dee Hock's gold cufflinks (inscribed with "will to succeed" and "grace to compromise") swayed international holdouts at a 1972 Sausalito summit.
Visa processes 8,600 transactions per second (190 billion annually), with five-nines uptime across six global data centers.
Despite powering $14 trillion volume, Visa bears no credit risk—it's purely a network connecting banks.
Financial & User Metrics
Transaction Volume: $14 trillion annually (17.3% CAGR since 1971).
Transactions Processed: 190 billion annually (707 million daily, 8,600 per second).
Cards in Circulation: 4.1 billion globally.
Member Banks: 16,000 across 200 countries.
Revenue: $29 billion (up from $22 billion two years prior), with $6 billion from value-added services.
Net Income Margins: 50% ($15 billion profit).
Gross Margins: 98%.
Merchant Fees (U.S. Visa/MasterCard): $93 billion annually (up from $33 billion in 2012).
Interchange Example (Large U.S. Merchant Credit): ~2% discount (~1.6% to issuer, 0.2% to acquirer, 0.2% to Visa).
Early Losses: $20 million fraud in first Fresno pilot; 22% delinquency rate.
IPO (2008): $18 billion raised at $90 billion valuation.
Bear Case & Bull Case
Bear Case:
Core Matures, Tailwind Decreases. Visa has long benefited from the wave of increasing card penetration, which has driven a 17% compounded annual growth rate in volume since 1971, but this secular tailwind is now slowing as more than 50% of consumer payments to merchants are already digitized. As Ben notes, "we will start decelerating because we've already shifted more than half the payments to happen on cards," meaning that without new technological advances, revenue growth will increasingly depend on fee adjustments or additional services amid limits to further penetration.
Government Instant Payments. Real-time government-sponsored payment networks are emerging around the world, providing instant transfers that, while lacking full payment features like easy refunds, serve as rails that others can build upon to potentially bypass Visa. For instance, FedNow is progressing slowly in the U.S. without strong mandates, but systems like Pix in Brazil have achieved fast adoption, and UPI in India is surging; moreover, cross-border links such as those between Singapore and India enable direct flows that threaten Visa's international volume by avoiding its network entirely.
Super Apps. In China, super apps like Alipay and WeChat have bundled messaging, shopping, and finance to route payments internally, creating massive volumes that rival Visa without relying on cards at all. If similar super apps take hold in the U.S., they could erode Visa's role by keeping transaction flows within their ecosystems, as Ben explains: "to the extent that super apps actually happened in the US the way that they did in China... you'd be telling a very different story."
Apple Pay: For many consumers, their credit card has effectively become their phone, with Apple Pay adding about 15 basis points to each transaction while tokenizing card data to enhance security but also hide details. Apple could push further by acquiring something like Square or Verifone to create a more closed-loop system, where an Apple card used at an Apple point of sale would skip Visa's network altogether.
Bull Case:
Locked-in Network Effect. Visa’s network, carefully built over 50 years, represents an incredibly powerful and locked-in effect that is nearly impossible to break, given its five-sided structure involving consumers, merchants, issuers, acquirers, and the network itself. As David emphasizes, "the more participants... the harder it is to actually pull off," and this compounding complexity—rooted in Hock's democratic framework from 1970—has made Visa resilient against antitrust challenges and fintech disruptions alike.
Tokenization. By replacing actual card data with secure tokens, Visa enhances privacy and fraud prevention, marking a key milestone where there are now more tokens than traditional card credentials processed on its network. This approach not only improves security but also enables proprietary high-margin services like recurring billing, fueling the $6 billion in value-added revenue, as Ben observes that tokens are "good for long-term margins and layering products."
Expansion of Cross-border Payments. International transactions, which currently make up about 20% of revenue, offer margins around 100 times higher than domestic ones due to foreign exchange fees, presenting a strong area for continued growth.
Apple Attack Unlikely. Any serious attack from Apple would require it to essentially become a bank, introducing significant regulation and risk that may not align with its brand. Even if successful, the gains might not justify the effort—adding Visa's market cap would boost Apple's by about 25%, but as David points out, this move "introduces a significant amount of risk to the whole franchise" and could threaten its core operations.
Good for the World vs. Bad for the World
Good:
Democratized Access to Credit. Visa has played a key role in democratizing access to credit, building on Bank of America's early installment loans for things like appliances and evolving into revolving cards that, as one executive reflected, "built this country" during the post-war era of optimism, where people borrowed with confidence in a brighter future and helped drive broader economic growth.
Enabled E-commerce. Without credit cards, e-commerce likely would not have developed as it did, since alternatives like checks or cash simply could not offer the instant and trusted payments needed for online transactions across different borders and currencies.
Global Payment. On a global scale, Visa has woven together a fabric of trust, allowing anyone to "show up anywhere with a piece of plastic and transact in any currency," eliminating the need for merchants and consumers to establish personal trust with each other.
Reduction in Fraud. Through digitization efforts, Visa has significantly reduced fraud, with early pilots showing an 82% drop in chargebacks thanks to innovations like magnetic stripes and point-of-sale terminals, while also providing consumers with greater convenience that helped overcome old taboos, such as the 1993 resistance to using cards at places like Burger King that eventually gave way to effortless taps. In the process, consumers have gained widespread access to rewards averaging around $1,100 per year, often subsidizing things like travel and meals through the issuers' share of interchange fees.
Bad:
Reverse Robin Hood. The system acts as a "reverse Robin Hood," favoring affluent card users who reap substantial rewards while disadvantaging less affluent consumers who rely on cash and end up bearing the costs indirectly.
Merchant Extortion. It places a heavy burden on merchants, especially small businesses dealing with low-dollar items, where one coffee shop owner found that processing fees exceeded the cost of the beans themselves; additionally, these fees can surpass EBITDA for retailers operating on thin margins, essentially extorting them through unavoidable charges. The industry as a whole promotes irresponsible debt use, with 50% of U.S. citizens carrying balances at around 22% interest rates.
Value Creation vs. Value Capture Analysis
Value Creation:
E-commerce Wouldn't Exist. Credit ****cards enabled instant, trusted online payments; alternatives (e.g., ACH) lacked speed/chargebacks. Visa has unlocked enormous value by digitizing payments, transforming the initial chaos of the Fresno Drop into $14 trillion in annual volume and 190 billion transactions, while fostering global trust in a system where "the merchant doesn't need to know you... and you don't need to trust the merchant."
Convenience. Consumers/stakeholders benefit via convenience (seamless any-currency taps), rewards ($1,100 average from issuers' interchange), and fraud cuts (82% via POS digitization). More broadly, it has supported optimism-driven economic growth, as "consumer credit built this country" and empowered everyday experiences across the world.
Value Capture:
20 bps Fee. Visa takes about 0.2% or $0.20 on a $100 transaction, achieving 98% gross margins and 50% net margins that result in $15 billion in profit on $29 billion in revenue, all without bearing any credit risk and scaling infinitely after digitization. Banks capture the rest, with issuers claiming around 1.6% in interchange plus the majority of their revenue from interest on balances, while acquirers get about 0.2%.
Powers
Brand. Visa effectively positioned itself against American Express through its Olympic sponsorship and the "Everywhere You Want to Be" campaign, which highlighted exotic locations where AmEx was not accepted, helping to elevate Visa from associations with debt stigma to a sense of prestige. Ben and David disagree on its lasting impact: Ben views it as largely a commodity with no real consumer preference compared to MasterCard, while David contends it provided a historical edge that accelerated Visa past MasterCard by creating an upmarket perception, even if the two are more equal today.
Scale Economies. Visa's fixed costs, such as data centers and R&D for innovations like the BASE systems, are spread across 16,000 banks, 4 billion cards, and 190 billion transactions, allowing for infinite low-cost scaling that results in 98% gross margins where new entrants simply cannot compete, as their investments would not pay back nearly as quickly.
Network Economies. The five-sided network effects—encompassing consumers, merchants, and banks—amplify value exponentially with each addition, creating a level of complexity that is far harder to manage than two-sided platforms like Airbnb and resulting in an unbreakable moat, as Ben and David describe it, which has consistently outpaced closed-loop rivals.
Counterpositioning at Takeoff. At its launch, Bank of America's unique scale in California—enabled by no limits on branches and a massive share of both consumers and merchants—allowed it to absorb the $20 million in initial losses and bootstrap the network in ways that rivals could not replicate, given the fragmentation and interstate banking bans elsewhere.
Playbook
Masterclass on Incentive Alignment. Interchange functions as a flexible "envelope" of value that can be split dynamically, such as charging higher rates for premium cards to reward issuers, which in turn attracts higher-spending customers that benefit merchants, while the overall structure aligns rivals through proportional ownership and democratic voting that prevents defection.
This Business is a Toll Booth. Visa operates like a toll booth, charging about 0.2% on transactions without taking on any risk, making it unavoidable for digital commerce and ensuring consistent tolls through its duopoly with MasterCard, which together yield 50% margins.
Good for Consumers. By emphasizing privacy and security features like tokenization, Visa justifies its product developments, which in turn shape the suite of offerings—such as anti-fraud tools and analytics that are positioned as consumer benefits but also allow for layering on high-margin add-ons, contributing to the $6 billion in value-added services.
Democratic Communist Capitalism. In this model, competitors like banks collaborate through a democratic process requiring 80% votes for changes, allowing thousands to pool resources in a way that dwarfs individual nations and embodies Hock's irony of achieving capitalist gains through communal structures that enable massive global scale.
World-Class Technology. As a socio-technical pioneer based in the Bay Area, Visa developed innovations like BASE I and II to digitize authorizations and settlements for instant approvals and overnight batches, along with magnetic stripes and point-of-sale terminals that slashed fraud by 82%, while early data centers and creative use of CompuServe bandwidth introduced redundancy and shared operations to support 8,600 transactions per second with near-perfect uptime.
Carveouts
Ben: I Think You Should Leave (Netflix sketch comedy by Tim Robinson); hilarious 15-minute episodes, especially Season 3 Episode 1 (skits 2-3 for outlandish humor).
David: Mistborn (fantasy novel by Brandon Sanderson); first in series, standalone-readable, with great world-building/magic; voraciously consumed by his wife post-recommendation.
Additional Notes
Episode metadata: Season 13, Episode 4; Title: "Visa"; Duration: 3:43:11; Release Date: November 26, 2023
Related episodes:
The NFL (Season 12, Episode 1)
Lockheed Martin (Season 12, Episode 5)
PayPal (Season 1, Episode 11)
Kyle! Thank you for sharing this story! It’s one of my faves. And I had the distinct pleasure to meet Dee Hock back in the day. I’ve learned so much from him. Though our interaction was but a day or two. He left an indelible mark on how I think about leadership.