A brief look at MasterCard

When a good idea comes around others tend to copy it. In 1966 that held true during the infancy of the credit card industry. Visa was not the first to try a credit card but it was the first to do it successfully. It would only be a matter of time until others tried as well.
The Bank of California (today the Union Bank of California) and United California Bank (today a part of Wells Fargo) formed the Interbank Card Association and joined with New York’s Marine Midland Bank (now a part of HSBC) to create MasterCharge: The Interbank Card. A credit card empire was born. Other fledgling credit cards began to be merged over time most famously First National City Bank (now Citi Bank), creating a vast financial empire. Unlike Visa MasterCharge was quick to enter into a partnership with foreign institutions, most popularly Eurocard, giving anyone who carried a MasterCharge card more access not only in the US but around the world.
With the popularity of the card expanding a new name was needed to counter the negative connotation of charging something. The rebranding was simple, the company became MasterCard in 1979. It remained a cooperative of banks until 2006 when it launched its Initial Public Offering. The logo that we know today was first introduced in 1969 with two circles, one red and one yellow. Red was meant to represent vitality and yellow happiness, richness and prosperity. The two circles were representative of the two original banks coming together in vision to begin the company. It has been changed overtime but the color scheme has remained the same.
Today the headquarters are located in Purchase, New York with its operations center outside of St. Louis, Missouri. They are active in sponsoring some of the world’s most famous sporting events like Major League Baseball, the UEFA Champions League, PGA Golf tournaments, and the New Zealand All Blacks Rugby team. In the past they have sponsored the FIFA World Cup and Formula One racing. Their most famous slogan is “There are some things that money can’t buy…for everything else there’s MasterCard.” They are trying to create a World Beyond Cash by giving people greater access to the financial system and diversifying its participants.
MasterCard along with Comerica Bank and the U.S. Government teamed up to create a system of prepaid debit cards for people who do not have a bank account. Comerica issued the cards called Direct Express and the consumers were given the same protections as anyone with a credit card These help to make up some of the 740,000,000 MasterCard issued cards all over the world (as of 2014).
Of course not everything has gone to plan. Like Visa, MasterCard has been the target of a number of anti-trust lawsuits and allegations, ranging from swipe fee fixing and ATM fee fixing to systematically keeping merchants from accepting American Express cards. The European Union has even targeted MasterCard (and Visa) over swipe fee price fixing and for charging non-Europeans higher fees for using their cards in Europe. Despite all of this MasterCard continues to be one of the giants of the credit card industry and chances are pretty good that as a merchant you have accepted a MasterCard at some point today.