Why do Visa Mastercard and American Express appear on so many cards around the world?
Your bank could be Maybank, CIMB, Public Bank, HSBC or Standard Chartered. But look at the bottom corner of the card and you will usually see one of the same few names.
Visa.
Mastercard.
American Express.
With thousands of banks globally, why are card payments still dominated by the same handful of companies?
The answer is simple: your bank and your payment network are doing two different jobs.
Say you have a Maybank Visa credit card.
Maybank is the card issuer.
It decides whether to approve your application, sets your credit limit, sends you the bill and collects your repayment.
Visa operates the payment network that helps connect your bank with the merchant, payment processor and other institutions involved in the transaction.
Mastercard works in a similar way.
So when you tap your card at a restaurant, the payment has to travel through several parties before the transaction is approved.
Your card information reaches the merchant’s payment provider.
The request is routed to the correct bank.
Your bank checks whether the payment should be approved.
That approval is sent back.
All of this usually happens within a few seconds.
The network is what helps make those connections possible.
This is where many people misunderstand the card business.
If your Visa credit card comes with a RM20,000 credit limit, Visa usually isn’t the company lending you that RM20,000.
Your issuing bank is.
That is why two people can both own Visa cards but have completely different credit limits, interest rates, rewards, cashback and benefits.
Those features are largely decided by the issuing bank and the specific card product.
Visa provides the payment network.
The same basic idea applies to Mastercard.
That small logo tells merchants that your card can be processed through that particular network.
American Express, or Amex, operates slightly differently.
Visa and Mastercard largely built their businesses around connecting banks, merchants and payment providers.
American Express traditionally operated a more integrated model.
It has historically had a more direct relationship with both cardholders and merchants.
That is one reason American Express can feel more like both a credit card company and a payment network at the same time.
It is also one reason its rewards and premium card programmes can be very different.
But there is a trade-off.
You have probably seen this before:
Visa accepted. Mastercard accepted. Amex not accepted.
Acceptance matters enormously in the card business.
And this is one of the biggest reasons Visa and Mastercard became so powerful.
There are many other payment networks.
China has UnionPay.
Japan has JCB.
India has RuPay.
There are also Discover and Diners Club International.
Malaysia has its own payment infrastructure too.
One of the most familiar examples is MyDebit, operated by Payments Network Malaysia, or PayNet.
So Visa Mastercard and American Express are not the only players.
They are simply among the most recognisable international networks.
If you look closely at some Malaysian debit cards, you may see the MyDebit logo.
That logo matters.
MyDebit is Malaysia’s domestic debit card scheme.
It allows participating Malaysian banks and merchants to process eligible debit transactions through local payment infrastructure.
So a Malaysian debit card may carry more than one network.
For example, the same physical card could support MyDebit for domestic transactions while also carrying an international network such as Visa or Mastercard.
This gives banks and merchants more than one possible route for processing payments.
And it shows that the payment system is more complicated than the logo printed on the front of your card.
Imagine you launch a new payment network tomorrow.
Call it XYZ Pay.
You convince a bank to issue one million XYZ Pay cards.
That sounds impressive.
But then customers try using them at restaurants, hotels and shops.
Almost nobody accepts XYZ Pay.
Customers quickly stop wanting the card.
Now try solving the problem from the other direction.
You convince thousands of merchants to install systems that accept XYZ Pay.
But almost nobody owns an XYZ Pay card.
Why would merchants bother?
That is the biggest obstacle.
A payment network needs both sides at the same time.
Customers want cards that are accepted everywhere.
Merchants want to accept cards that everybody already carries.
Banks want to issue cards that customers can use almost anywhere.
The bigger the network becomes, the more useful it becomes.
This is called a network effect.
And Visa and Mastercard have been building that network for decades.
A new competitor does not simply need a logo and an app.
It needs banks.
It needs merchants.
It needs payment processors.
It needs fraud systems.
It needs cybersecurity.
It needs dispute and chargeback procedures.
It needs settlement systems.
It needs technology that works across different banks, currencies and countries.
Most importantly, it has to work reliably.
If you travel from Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo, London or New York, you want to tap your card without wondering which local payment system that country uses.
That global acceptance is incredibly valuable.
It is also incredibly difficult to recreate.
Mobile wallets make the story slightly more confusing.
When you add a Visa or Mastercard to Apple Pay, Apple Pay usually does not replace the underlying card network.
Instead, the wallet changes how your payment credentials are stored and presented.
You tap your phone.
But the transaction may still travel through Visa or Mastercard underneath.
So Apple Pay is not simply another Visa.
It sits on a different part of the payment system.
The same is true for many other mobile wallets.
The brand you see on your phone is not necessarily the network actually processing the payment.
Malaysia’s DuitNow ecosystem is different.
When you scan a DuitNow QR and pay directly from your bank account or participating e-wallet, there may be no traditional Visa or Mastercard card transaction involved at all.
Money moves directly through account-to-account payment infrastructure.
That creates another form of competition.
For decades, the question was:
Which card network will process this payment?
Today, another question is becoming increasingly important:
Does this payment need a card network at all?
For a RM10 lunch, a DuitNow QR transfer may be just as convenient as tapping a card.
That does not mean Visa or Mastercard suddenly become irrelevant.
But it gives consumers and merchants another way to pay.
Unlikely.
Their biggest advantage is not the plastic card.
It is the network behind it.
Visa and Mastercard have spent decades building connections with banks, merchants and payment companies around the world.
That makes them particularly useful for international payments.
Domestic systems such as DuitNow and MyDebit can compete strongly within Malaysia.
But when Malaysians travel overseas, global acceptance still matters.
That is where international card networks remain extremely difficult to replace.
The future may therefore involve several payment systems existing together.
Cards for some transactions.
DuitNow for others.
Mobile wallets layered on top.
Domestic networks where they make sense.
International networks when global acceptance matters.
The next time you look at your bank card, pay attention to both logos.
The bank logo tells you who issued the card.
The Visa, Mastercard, American Express or MyDebit logo tells you which payment network may be involved when you spend.
That small logo represents an enormous system connecting banks, merchants, payment processors and consumers.
And that is why we keep seeing the same names.
Starting another card company is possible.
Building another Visa or Mastercard-sized network is much harder.
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