Here's How Long It Took Visa To Reach A $100B Market Cap

Visa Inc V didn’t pass $100 billion until fall 2013 — well after its founding but relatively soon after its incorporation.

The company technically got its start in 1958, when Bank of America Corp BAC created BankAmericard as the first ever revolving-credit card. The program went international in 1974, launched a debit card in 1975, and then was renamed “Visa” in 1976.

In 1997, it facilitated $1 trillion in payments, and by 2001, it had issued 1 billion cards.

It wasn’t until 2007 that the program incorporated into Visa Inc, and it didn’t tap the public markets until 2008, just after launching its mobile platform. Visa’s $19.1 billion offering was, at that time, the largest in history.

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Between then and the striking of its 2013 milestone, the company notched few notable achievements. It joined the S&P 500 index in 2009 and was added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average around the same time it struck $100 billion.

A period of quiet, organic growth preceded a 2014 launch of Visa Checkout for online payments, as well as the 2016 acquisition of Visa’s European affiliate.

Now, Visa is the world’s second-largest payment network after a Chinese competitor, facilitating transactions between 336 million cardholders and 40 million merchants. It aims to expand further with a recently announced change to its transaction fee structure.

Vias has a market cap of $350 billion at time of publication.