Businesses & retailers

How it works

We provide the products and services that make electronic payments fast, secure and convenient.

There are four groups involved in any transaction process. These are:

You – the retailers or merchants that accept Visa cards, benefiting from increased speed, efficiency and security, as well as a payment method that comes with guarantees. This can also include merchant agents which provide services that store, transmit or process cardholder data on behalf of merchants.
Your acquiring bank – the banks and other payment service providers that sign up retailers to accept Visa payments
Your customers – the people who use Visa cards to make fast, secure electronic payments
Your customers’ card issuing banks – the banks and other payment service providers that issue Visa cards to their customers.

How payments are processed

Our highly sophisticated, reliable and secure worldwide IT network is at the heart of our business.

We operate one of the largest transaction processing systems in the world, capable of connecting any cardholder’s bank to any retailer’s bank, from any point of sale in the world, at any time.

Processing a Visa card transaction involves two stages:

Authorisation – when an electronic request is generated to either approve or decline a transaction
Clearing and settlement – when all the parties involved in the transaction settle their accounts and get paid.

Rules and regulations

We have a set of operating regulations that cover a range of issues from how to use Visa signage and artwork to dealing with refunds and transactions involving currency conversion.