Throughout the world, its principal business is to process payments between the banks of merchants and the card issuing banks or credit unions of the purchasers who use the “Mastercard” brand debit, credit and prepaid to make purchases.
Mastercard, originally known as “Interbank” from 1966 to 1969 and “Master Charge” from 1969 to 1979, was created by an alliance of several regional bankcard associations in response to the BankAmericard issued by Bank of America, which later became the Visa credit card issued by Visa Inc.
