Mastercard Incorporated (stylized as MasterCard from 1979 to 2016 and MasterCard since 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 suburb of St. Louis, 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/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. From 1966 to 1979, Mastercard was called “Interbank” and “Master Charge”.

Visa Inc. (also known as Visa, stylized as VISA) is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. It facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly through Visa-branded credit cards, gift cards, and debit cards. Visa does not issue cards, extend credit, or set rates and fees for consumers; rather, Visa provides financial institutions with Visa-branded payment products that they then use to offer credit, debit, prepaid and cash-access programs to their customers. In 2015, the Nilson Report, a publication that tracks the credit card industry, found that Visa’s global network (known as VisaNet) processed 100 billion transactions during 2014 with a total volume of US$6.8 trillion.

Visa has operations across all continents worldwide with the exception of Antarctica. Nearly all Visa transactions worldwide are processed through VisaNet at one of two secure facilities: Operations Center East, located near Ashburn, Virginia; and Operations Center Central, located near Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Both data centers are heavily secured against natural disasters, crime, and terrorism; can operate independently of each other and from external utilities if necessary, and can handle up to 30,000 simultaneous transactions and up to 100 billion computations every second. Every transaction is checked past 500 variables including 100 fraud-detection parameters—such as the location and spending habits of the customer and the merchant’s location – before being accepted.

The American Express Company, also known as Amex, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Three World Financial Center in New York City. The company was founded in 1850 and is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is best known for its charge card, credit card, and traveler’s cheque businesses.

In 2016, credit cards using the American Express network accounted for 22.9% of the total dollar volume of credit card transactions in the US. As of December 31, 2017, the company had 112.8 million cards in force, including 50 million cards in force in the United States, each with average annual spending of $18,519.

In 2017, Forbes named American Express as the 23rd most valuable brand in the world (and the highest within financial services), estimating the brand to be worth US$24.5 billion. In 2018, Fortune ranked American Express as the 14th most admired company worldwide, and the 23rd best company to work for.

The company’s logo, adopted in 1958, is a gladiator or centurion whose image appears on the company’s traveler’s cheques, charge cards, and credit cards.