What’s the point of Visa and Mastercard if it’s always from a bank? AmEx cards are produced and processed by them only and not any other processor, so why can’t banks make credit cards without Visa or Mastercard, or vice-versa?

Question

What’s the point of Visa and Mastercard if it’s always from a bank? AmEx cards are produced and processed by them only and not any other processor, so why can’t banks make credit cards without Visa or Mastercard, or vice-versa?

In: 942

Answer 1

VISA and Mastercard are international networks, which means the bank doesn’t have to do anything to ensure that you could pay with it in stores or withdraw money from an ATM. AmEx is a good example of this because lots of places in the world don’t accept AmEx cards, despite them being huge and spending lots of money on this. I recently booked a rental car in Portugal and was warned that AmEx won’t work (not that I planned to use it)

I remember a long time ago my mother had an account in a local bank that used their own cards. She could only withdraw money from a single ATM in town and couldn’t pay with this card anywhere. That’s how most banks would end up if they weren’t using VISA and Mastercard