Visa was originally founded as the BankAmericard program.
Bank of America launched BankAmericard in 1958 in Fresno, California. It was one of the first large-scale general-purpose credit-card programs, allowing customers to borrow and repay through a revolving credit system. The early launch involved distributing cards widely to local residents, an experiment that helped establish the card model.
The program expanded beyond Bank of America and became an independent international network. In 1976, it adopted the name Visa, which was intended to be simple to pronounce across many languages. Visa Inc. later became a publicly traded company in 2008.
Visa is a payments network rather than a traditional bank that directly lends to most cardholders. Banks and other financial institutions issue Visa-branded cards, while Visa operates the network that helps authorize and settle transactions.