Visa vs MasterCard Decoded

So, don’t you want to know more about them?

Let us tell you that both are slightly different from each other. But before you jump into that, let’s skim through a bit about these cards. Here you go!

VISA

Visa is an American multinational financial service that was founded in 1958 by the name of Americard in Fresno, California. Visa facilitates electronic fund transfers globally via visa branded cards. Visa does not issue credit cards itself but provides various financial institutions with visa branded payment products that are further used by its customers to carry out their payments. Visa operates across six continents. Visa is the second-largest card payment company globally. Visa offers three levels of benefits they are as follows-

• Traditional
• Signature
• Infinite

MasterCard

MasterCard Incorporated is an American Multinational service founded in 1966, headquartered in Purchase, New York. MasterCard works on its principal business to process payments between card-issuing banks and merchants. MasterCard Worldwide is a publicly trading company since 2006 before which it was owned by 25000 financial institutions that issue branded cards. MasterCard also offers three levels of benefits they are as follows-

• Standard
• World
• World Elite

Difference between Visa and Master Card

Although there is not much difference between Visa and Master credit card, they are not completely identical. As far as consumers are concerned there is no difference between MasterCard and Visa. Visa and MasterCard both rely on the banks to issue credit cards that utilize the payment methods. Therefore, annual fees, reward points, interest rates, and all other charges are issued by the bank, not the company; similarly, when you pay the bill for your credit card, you pay it to the financial institution that has issues instead of Visa or MasterCard.

Similarities between Visa and MasterCard

Both Visa and MasterCard require you to have a well-maintained credit Score to be eligible for a credit card. It’s the bank that sponsors the card and makes the final decision not the credit card companies. Similar to the credit score is the case for fees. The fees are typically set by the banks and not by Visa or MasterCard. While choosing a card don’t rely on the name of the card instead of research properly to ensure that you are getting exactly what you are looking for. If you use business credit card, both Visa and Master card offer some special corporate deals, which feature discounts up to 15% or more on qualifying merchants that are refunded to the statement of cardholder automatically.

Bottom-Line

It is clear that the bank is the governing body that decides the APR, terms and reward programs. Hence there is no point to get this deep when requesting a credit card. However, the actual difference between both cards is very subtle but might affect a consumer when it comes to benefits and perks. These benefits and perks include fraud protection, car rental insurance, travel rewards, etc. If you are interested in any of these benefits, then you might consider switching your credit card company otherwise you’re good to go.