Visa International Origins

Visa traces its roots to 1958, when Bank of America, based in San Francisco, issued the BankAmericard. At the time, many banks in the United States offered charge cards, or cards that enabled consumers to charge goods and services to an account.

Banks required cardholders to then pay their account balances in full each month. Unlike charge cards, the BankAmericard offered cardholders credit privileges, so they could pay their balance over a longer period of time in increments, plus interest. Bank of America licensed the card throughout California and eventually in other states as well.

The BankAmericard suffered from transactions problems and fraud during the early 1960s because of unreliable interchange systems between Bank of America and other banks licensed to issue the card. In 1968 Dee Ward Hock, an executive of the National Bank of Commerce in Seattle, Washington, headed a committee of BankAmericard licensees that was formed to resolve the problems among credit-card issuers.

Two years later Hock was instrumental in creating National BankAmericard Inc. (NBI), a consortium of BankAmericard licensees designed to conduct more reliable transactions between the banks. NBI bought the domestic bankcard system from Bank of America, and Hock became the head of NBI.

By 1970 the BankAmericard and its biggest competitor, Master Charge (later MasterCard), were offered nationwide, and most banks had eliminated their own bankcard programs to join one or both of the national systems.