Visa 2011 Annual Report Download - page 5

Table of Contents
PART I
ITEM 1. Business
Overview
Visa Inc., which we refer to as Visa or the Company, is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, banks and
governments in more than 200 countries and territories, enabling them to use digital currency instead of cash and checks.
Our business primarily consists of the following:
• we own, manage and promote a portfolio of well-known, widely-accepted payment brands, including Visa, Visa Electron, PLUS and Interlink,
which we license to our clients for use in their payment programs;
• we offer a wide range of branded payments product platforms, which our clients, primarily financial institutions, use to develop and offer credit,
debit, prepaid and cash access programs for their customers (individuals, businesses and government entities);
• we provide transaction processing and value-added services to our clients through VisaNet, Visa Debit Processing Services, Visa Processing
Services, CyberSource, PlaySpan and Fundamo; and
• we promote and enforce a common set of operating regulations adhered to by our clients to ensure the efficient and secure functioning of our
payments network and the maintenance and promotion of our brands.
To ensure our long-term success and the success of our clients:
• we invest in new services and processing platforms to facilitate more convenient and innovative payment methods, such as mobile payments,
money transfer and eCommerce; and
• we continually improve the speed, efficiency, security and performance of our network and our payments services to enhance the reliability of
our global processing infrastructure and protect the security of cardholder information.
We operate an open-loop payments network, a multi-party system in which Visa connects financial institutions—issuing financial institutions, or
issuers, that issue cards to cardholders, and acquiring financial institutions, or acquirers, that have the banking relationship with merchants—and manage the
exchange of information and value between them. As such, Visa does not issue cards, extend credit, or collect, assess or set cardholder fees or interest
charges. In most instances, cardholder and merchant relationships belong to, and are managed by, our network of financial institution clients. We derive
revenues primarily from fees paid by our clients based on payments volume, transactions that we process and other related services that we provide.
Business developments in fiscal 2011 included the following:
• Regulation. New rules were set out with respect to debit products under the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, or the Reform Act.
The Reform Act regulates, among other things, interchange fees, the debit networks issuers make available, merchants' choices among these
networks and transaction routing. These regulations will cause us to renegotiate some portions of client contracts. See—Government Regulation
below.
• U.S. Debit Strategy. We have designed or implemented several modifications to our U.S. debit strategy to ensure compliance with the Reform
Act.
• Interchange. We established new debit interchange rate structures, effective October 2011, for the Visa Consumer Check card, Interlink
and Small Business Debit. Two
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