Visa Inc. V

The business

Visa does not lend anyone money and does not issue anyone a card. It runs the wires. When a card is presented anywhere on earth, Visa authorises the transaction, clears it and settles it between the merchant's bank and the cardholder's bank, and takes a few basis points for doing so.

That is the best model in finance because the cost of the next transaction is almost zero while volume compounds with global consumption, card penetration and inflation at once. There are two of these networks and no third. What Visa actually sells is the certainty that a card works in a shop in a country neither party has been to.