Best Visa Bitcoin Debit Card Providers (Plastic and Virtual)

VISA is the leading credit and debit card provider in the payment industry.

History of VISA

The American financial service provider giant has traces back to the 1950s when Bank of America started the BankAmericacard program in California. The popularity of bank card spread across quickly the country and more and more banks wanted to license the card system. After couple of years the control of the payment system has been passed into the hands of  the issuer banks and started to grow into an international network. The VISA name has been picked up in 1976 by the multinational company it has been grown into in the meantime.

Global Acceptance of VISA cards

VISA offers its services in more than 200 different countries worldwide. There are more than 363 million VISA credit cards and 506 million VISA debit cards were in circulation in 2016 just in the USA. The purchasing volume of these cards were almost $3.6 trillion in 2016.  Globally there are more than 1.46 billion VISA cards are on the market.

Over 30 million online merchants accepts VISA cards as payment globally. The number of POS terminals accepting VISA is unknown, however given number of the businesses worldwide this number means possibly more than 100 million retailers.

Benefits and challanges for bitcoin debit card holders

VISA does not charge its cardholders directly with fees. The associated issuance fees, annual charges, rewards and interest rates are all set by the card provider who are offering the VISA cards. In stead VISA is charging the retailer who are offering VISA as a payment method for it’s clients. So bitcoin debit card holders should not worry about extra charges, they just have to pay all those fees that are listed on the bitcoin debit card provider’s fee schedule, nothing more.

There is an option to issue anonymous cards at VISA, when only a name is displayed on the card that can be freely chosen. These anonymous cards may not be accepted by all retailers as at payment in some casue it might be required prove the  personal identity with a photo ID. Anonymous bitcoin debit card holder should be aware of this limitation.