Visa 2015 Annual Report Download - page 18

PART I
ITEM 1. Business
General Business Developments
Visa Inc., which we refer to as Visa or the Company, is a global payments technology company
that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions and governments in more than 200
countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments. We operate one of the world’s
most advanced processing networks — VisaNet — which facilitates authorization, clearing and
settlement of payment transactions worldwide. It also offers fraud protection for account holders and
rapid payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates
and fees for account holders on Visa-branded cards and payment products. In most cases, account
holder and merchant relationships belong to, and are managed by, our financial institution clients.
Visa Inc. was incorporated in the State of Delaware in May 2007. In October 2007, we undertook a
reorganization in which Visa U.S.A. Inc., Visa International Service Association, Visa Canada
Corporation and Inovant LLC became direct or indirect subsidiaries of Visa Inc. Visa Europe Limited
remains owned and governed by its European member financial institutions and is not a subsidiary of
Visa Inc. Visa Inc. completed its initial public offering (“IPO”) in March 2008.
General business developments in fiscal 2015 included the following:
•Product innovation. Visa’s fundamental approach to innovation focuses on: (i) supporting an
evolving payments ecosystem; (ii) enhancing payment system security through innovation;
and (iii) developing new platforms, products and services.
i. Evolving payments ecosystem. By providing new and existing clients and partners
greater access to Visa’s network and payment capabilities, Visa is contributing to the
evolving payments ecosystem. Through Visa’s new developer center, financial
institutions, software, cloud computing and other technology companies and new entrants
will be able to more easily access Visa payment capabilities through programing
interfaces and software developer kits beginning in 2016. The Visa Ready program also
is intended to enable our partners to quickly deploy devices, software and services to
consumers that meet Visa’s standards, with a goal of significantly accelerating the pace
of innovation in payments.
ii. Enhancing payment system security through innovation. During 2015, Visa continued to
make strides to enhance the security of the broader payments ecosystem with the
following programs:
a. Tokenization: Tokenization replaces account numbers with digital tokens for online
and mobile payments. This benefits merchants and our financial institution clients
by removing sensitive account information from online and mobile payments and
has the potential to reduce fraud risk. Visa has been working with several partners,
including Apple, Google and Samsung, who are using our tokenization service to
offer mobile payment solutions.
b. EMV chip payment technology: Visa is addressing fraud at the physical point-of-
sale by working with merchants and our financial institution clients in the U.S. to
introduce EMV-chip payment technology.
c. Fraud and data analytics: As an industry leader in payment security, we enhanced
our real-time data analytics capabilities. When combined with Visa’s centralized
network structure, these capabilities help our financial institution clients and
merchants identify and address fraud.
5