Visa’s Organizational Structure

Introduction

Visa Inc. is an American financial services corporation that facilitates electronic funds transfers across the world, primarily through its own Visa-branded credit cards, debit cards, and prepaid cards. Founded in 1958 by Dee Hock as Bank of Americard, it is one of the world’s most valuable companies. 

Visa operates not through the issuance of its own cards but instead by providing financial institutions with Visa-branded payment products that they then use to offer their own credit, debit, prepaid, and cash access programs to their own customers. This has been Visa’s primary business operation since 1966 when the then Bank of Americard began licensing its program to other financial institutions in response to competitor Master Charge (now Mastercard). The company was renamed Visa in 1976.

Nearly all Visa transactions worldwide are processed through the company’s directly operated VisaNet network at one of four secure data centers, located in Ashburn, Virginia; Highlands Ranch, Colorado; London, England; and Singapore. In 2015, the Nilson Report found that VisaNet processed 100 billion transactions in 2014 with a total volume of US$6.8 trillion. 

Visa is the world’s second-largest card payment organization in the world, surpassed only by China UnionPay, based on the annual value of card payments transacted and the number of issued cards.

Visa’s Organizational Leadership

Visa’s day-to-day management is overseen by the Executive Committee, a team of 14 individuals holding executive-level positions within the Visa business. These individuals occupy typical roles such as risk, marketing, finance, strategy, and technology. The Executive Committee also includes regional heads for North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Visa’s Board of Directors is the governing body of the organization that’s elected by stockholders, with members often selected for their expertise in a particular area or their industry connections. 

As with many boards, Visa’s board largely holds an advisory role, but some do have wide-reaching powers, duties, and responsibilities as stipulated by corporate law and government regulations, particularly in heavily regulated industries such as finance and pharma. 

An organization can also elect to give its board supervisory powers and oversight through its own constitution and by-laws.

Visa’s Organizational Structure

Visa appears to operate with what is known as a matrix structure. This is one of the most common ways of structuring a large organization with multiple teams and levels of management, whereby reporting relationships follow a grid structure rather than the traditional top-down hierarchy. 

Matrix structures integrate elements from both the functional and divisional structures simultaneously. In a matrix organization, workers have twofold reporting relationships where they report to a product manager and a functional manager. In other words, team members have two distinct line managers with different responsibilities. These managers play fluid roles while answering to the executive who is in a fixed managerial role.

This type of org structure is ideal for teams working on multiple projects at the same time. Instead of creating lots of separate teams for each project, existing teams can be split up and be assigned their own specific managers who can guide them through a project that runs alongside their existing tasks and responsibilities.

Want to learn more about organizational structures and the role that they play within modern organizations? Here are some helpful blog resources that you can get started with:

• What Are Organizational Charts?
• What is a Functional Organizational Structure?
• What is the Matrix Org Structure? 

Create this chart in Organimi! 

You can download the CSV file of Visa’s org structure, import it into Organimi and start editing this chart right away! Here’s how:

1.  From your dashboard, select Data Import.
2.  Click the CSV tile.
3.  Click +Upload Your File.   
4. Select an Excel file from your device.
5.  In the Organization field, click the down arrow to select an organization.
6. Click Create a New Chart
7. Click Next and select: Organization Chart
8. Select the auto-build tool to automatically build your chart.
9. Voila!

Download CSV file:
Visa (3.34 KB)