MasterCard Worldwide is a U.S. payment system, a competitor of Visa International Service Association, whose flagship product is the famous credit card. It is an American multinational corporation with its headquarters in the MasterCard International Global Headquarters in Purchase, New York. The company was created by two entrepreneurs in Louisville, Ky. named Raymond Tanenhaus and Stanley Benovitz. It was absorbed by the United California Bank in year 1966. Prior to its initial public offering, MasterCard Worldwide was a cooperative owned by the 25,000+ financial institutions that issue its card.
MasterCard Worldwide has been a publicly traded company since 2006. It is a cooperative owned by more than 23,000 financial institutions in 5 major regional structures (North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia / Pacific, Africa / Middle East / South East Asia). The head office is located at MasterCard’s New York. Banks affiliated to the company issuing MasterCard cards MasterCard, Maestro or Cirrus choosing their own design in over 210 countries.
MasterCard, originally known as Master Charge, was created by several California banks as a competitor to the BankAmericard issued by Bank of America, which later became the Visa credit card issued by Visa Inc. The original banks behind MasterCharge were United California Bank, Wells Fargo, Crocker National Bank, and the Bank of California.
In 1966, MasterCard was launched when 17 U.S. banks have decided to set up the Interbank Card Association (ICA). Two years later, in 1968, MasterCard is expanding its presence in Mexico, Japan and Europe. In 1979, “Master Charge: The Interbank Card” was renamed simply “MasterCard”. In the early 1990s MasterCard bought the British Access card and the Access name was dropped. In 2002, MasterCard International merged with Europay International SA, another large credit-card issuer association, which for many years issued cards under the name Eurocard. In 2006 16.1 billion of transactions were made on the MasterCard network for a turnover of more than 2,000 billion dollars. 817 million MasterCard cards were issued network in the world. Holders of these cards can be used in more than 25 million merchants and make withdrawals at over 900,000 ATMs affiliated to the network.
MasterCard Europe was established in July 2002 and brings together European banks from 51 countries. Europay France is the company that manages the MasterCard network for France. In France there are more than 21 million cardholders of MasterCard, Maestro or Cirrus network and has registered 126 million transactions in 2006 to a turnover of more than 12 billion euros.