MasterCard

Mastercard Incorporated (stylized as MasterCard from 1979 to 2016 and mastercard from 2016) is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in the Mastercard International Global Headquarters in Purchase, New York, United States. The Global Operations Headquarters is located in O'Fallon, Missouri, United States, a municipality of St. Charles County, Missouri. Throughout the world, its principal business is to process payments between the banks of merchants and the card issuing banks or credit unions of the purchasers who use the 'Mastercard' brand debit, credit and prepaid to make purchases. Mastercard Worldwide has been a publicly traded company since 2006. Prior to its initial public offering, Mastercard Worldwide was a cooperative owned by the more than 25,000 financial institutions that issue its branded cards. Mastercard, originally known as 'Interbank' from 1966 to 1969 and 'Master Charge' from 1969 to 1979, was created by an alliance of several regional bankcard associations in response to the BankAmericard issued by Bank of America, which later became the Visa credit card issued by Visa Inc. Although BankAmericard's debut in 1958 had been a notorious disaster, it began to turn a profit by May 1961. Bank of America deliberately kept this information secret and allowed then-widespread negative impressions to linger in order to ward off competition. This strategy was successful until 1966, when BankAmericard's profitability had become far too big to hide. From 1960 to 1966, there were only 10 new credit cards introduced in the United States, but from 1966 to 1968, approximately 440 credit cards were introduced by banks large and small throughout the country. These newcomers promptly banded together into regional bankcard associations. In 1966, several bankcard associations joined together to form the Interbank Card Association (ICA). The Interbank branding in 1966 initially consisted only of a small unobtrusive lowercase i inside a circle in the lower right hand corner of the front of each Interbank card; the rest of the card design was the prerogative of each issuing bank. This tiny logo proved to be entirely unsatisfactory for creating nationwide brand awareness in order to compete against the established leader, BankAmericard. In 1969, Interbank developed a new national brand, 'Master Charge: The Interbank Card' by combining the two overlapping yellow and orange circles of the Western States Bankcard Association with the 'Master Charge' name coined by the First National Bank of Louisville, Kentucky. That same year, First National City Bank joined Interbank and merged its proprietary Everything Card with Master Charge. In 1968, the ICA and Eurocard started a strategic alliance, which effectively allowed the ICA access to the European market, and for Eurocard to be accepted on the ICA network. The Access card system from the United Kingdom joined the ICA/Eurocard alliance in 1972. In 1979, 'Master Charge: The Interbank Card' was renamed 'MasterCard'. In 1997, Mastercard took over the Access card; the Access brand was then retired. In 2002, MasterCard International merged with Europay International, another large credit-card issuer association, of which Eurocard had become a part in 1992.