Recommended List of Visa Bingo Sites

What is Visa?

Visa is an American multi-national financial services company. It is based in California, in the United States. Contrary to popular belief, it does not offer any financial services to the general public at all. Instead, it licences the use of its name and services to other financial organisations such as banks, enabling them to offer Visa branded debit, credit and other financial services to their customers. It operates what is probably the largest financial services network in the world.

The last available published figures (2015) suggest that Visa is responsible for around 100 billion separate transactions, worth in the region of $7 trillion. Although China UnionPay has recently overtaken Visa on some financial measures, this is based almost entirely on the Chinese domestic market. The Chinese concern has little reach beyond south-east Asia. Worldwide, only MasterCard offers any kind of global competition.

But How Does it Actually Work at a Bingo Site?

Fortunately every bingo site that has veer launched will accept visa. A visa debit card is perfect as this links directly to your bank account. When you first sign up online, you’ll be asked for your name and address as well as being asked to confirm a bank. Now not all sites require a bank card when registering. just those offering a no deposit bonus. Once you’ve registered your visa card you won’t need to do it again. The bingo site operator will safely store your card details online. This is perfect as it makes depositing a quick and seamless affair. But most importantly, you can make withdrawals back to your visa debit card. This is able to happen because the card is linked directly to your bank account. It is worth pointing out that visa debit and visa credit are very different. If you deposit via a visa credit card, then withdrawals will not be able to be made back to that card. So just be aware of there difference between the two.

Some Background History on Visa

The roots of this extraordinary success story are to be found in the post-war United States. Business was booming as the country prospered after the end of World War Two (remember that it had suffered little damage itself, so did not have to spend vast amounts on the re-building that European nations required). By the mid-1950s, there were three main alternative means of obtaining credit in the United States: a bank loan, a credit card issued by local banks or merchants, or charge cards. Each of these had major disadvantages.

Bank loans were difficult to arrange, and somewhat inflexible. They had to be arranged in advance, and you had to state what they were for. Generally speaking, you couldn’t just pop in to see the bank manager and say “I want to borrow some money”. You had to say what it was for, like a car or a television), and the money was also likely to be secured, usually on the value of your home.

The local cards were fine in the area they were issued, but could not be used elsewhere. Also they were not for general use. Stores did not accept each other’s cards, and rival banks often signed up retailers on exclusive deals. This meant that customers had to carry loads of different cards, and pay numerous bills to different card accounts, and all at different times too.

Charge cards, such as Diner’s Card, were already available, but they were only available to the very wealthy, and in any case they did not offer credit: you had to pay the entire bill off at the end of the monthly statement period.

So the American economy and its people were in desperate need of a solution which resolved all these issues and problems, which is where the early history of Visa begins…

The story of this mega-corporation begins around sixty years ago. In 1958, the Bank of America decided to attempt to solve the matter by experimenting with the controlled test of a mass-mailing of credit cards. Yes, you read that right! These were “free” credit cards, in that customers did not have to apply for them, but would instead receive them unsolicited. They did of course, still need to pay interest charges. So it was that the water was tested in the small Californian town of Fresno.

The test worked fine, apart from two problems. Firstly, rival banks got wind of the experiment and decided to release their own cards. Soon, the state of California was flooded with over 2 million credit cards, all freely given away to eager customers. The second problem was rather more obvious. As you can imagine with such a reckless release, many of the new accounts were soon in massive arrears, with little prospect of the borrowed money ever being repaid. Some estimates suggested that as many as a quarter of the cards issued were effectively in default.

Nevertheless, the basic idea was sound, and the Bank of America set to work on salvaging the scheme and clearing up the collateral damage. Just as it was about to re-launch the scheme throughout the state of California however, the bank got wind of a new scheme called Master Charge, which was being set up by a consortium of rival banks. This bitter rivalry continues to this very day. This new upstart competitor is of course now known as MasterCard.

These events caused a swift change of plan by the Bank of America, which instead decided to licencing arrangements with banks outside the state in order to attempt to introduce its new service nationwide. The licencing agreements were essential because at the time, the Bank of America was not permitted to operate (by Federal law) outside the state of California.

So it was that in 1966, the new BankAmericard system began its inexorable spread throughout the nation. By 1970, over 100 million credit cards had been distributed throughout the United States.

Also during the late 1960s, the Bank began to issue licences to its products for other countries too. In the United Kingdom, the licencing bank was Barclays, resulting in the introduction to the nation of the iconic Barclaycard. By 1972, licensees were operating in 15 different countries across the world.

The worldwide spread of the Bank of America’s new financial services was a tremendous success, resulting in a massive financial boost to the bank. But it was not without its problems. Foremost of these was the ad hoc way that all the different licensees across the world operated their services. The biggest problem was in policing the transactions between them as international trade expanded rapidly over time. They began to charge each other fees to transfer funds, and since they varied so much, the whole process was becoming unwieldy and impractical to operate.

As a result, an arrangement was reached whereby the Bank of America relinquished control of its service, which was effectively managed by a consortium of its licensees, called the International Bankcard Company (IBANCO). This process started within the United States in 1970. By 1974, the new controlling body had taken over complete control of international service.

By 1976, it was realised that it would be better if all these separate licensees across the different nations of the world agreed a common system and branding. Not surprisingly, there was a reluctance to unite under any name that included “America” in the title: it would have seemed like a foreign country was in charge of the domestic finances of these independent countries, and would not in any case have been an attractive brand name in those countries.

This resulted in an international agreement to adopt the more generic name “Visa”, which remains the name of this internationally popular service to this day. It was originally conceived by the original company’s founder, Dee Hock, who liked its simplicity and connotations of universal acceptance.

The Visa of Today

Things have moved on a bit since those Barclaycard days. The iconic blue, white and gold striped plastic card is no more. Their TV advertising campaigns are no longer fronted by Rowan Atkinson’s hapless James Bond spoof.

Instead, Visa have updated their services to follow current technological progress. Of course, you can still use your plastic credit and debit cards in the old fashioned way. Only now it’s chip and PIN rather than the old magnetic strip swipe.

Plus there are contactless payments too. You still use your plastic card, but instead of swiping or inserting, instead you can just waft your card in front of the retailer’s terminal to authorise your payments. Actually, waft is a bit of a stretch. The official word is “tap”. “Tap and pay” according to the marketing blurb.

But now technology is moving on to the extent that you do not necessarily need your physical card at all in order to authorise a purchase. You can now use link your Visa card to any number of mobile devices, so you can pay just by using your phone as a proxy for your card.

For Apple phone users, all you need to do is open Wallet and add your Visa card to your device. The system can also be used by Apple Watch owners, but the set up process is slightly different.

But any modern smartphone owner can take advantage of this convenient payment method. For Samsung owners, and indeed any Android phone, you will just need to download the app and upload your card details to your device. In most cases this involves merely taking a photo of your card!

So now in the 21st Century, Visa is as relevant today as it was back in the early days of credit cards in the 1970s. The clunky old Barclaycard may seem as outdated as an 8 track cartridge (younger readers may need to ask their grandparents), but new contactless payments are as contemporary as the latest YouTube v-logger (older readers may need to ask their grandchildren).