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Visa Inc. marks today as the 50th anniversary of its card, if one counts the BankAmericard years. Bank of America Corp. launched BankAmericard, a revolving credit card, Sept. 18, 1958, according to Visa. BankAmericard became Visa in 1976. Reminiscing about his time with the association, former Visa USA CEO Carl Pascarella tells CardLine sister publication Cards&Payments that Visa's expansion around the world in the 1970s and 1980s required it to break free of exclusive issuing relationships with banks in some countries. For example, Sumitomo Credit was the exclusive issuer of Visa cards in Japan in the 1980s, and Visa's efforts to expand issuance to other financial institutions there did not sit well with Sumitomo executives, says Pascarella, who then was head of Visa's Asia-Pacific region. In 1986, Chuck Russell, then Visa USA CEO, and Yo Suzuki, president, chairman and CEO of Sumitomo Credit, were the best men at Pascarella's wedding. "As my wife was walking down the aisle, [Suzuki] was still whispering in my ear about how we shouldn't open Visa up to other banks," Pascarella says. He adds that expanding Visa issuance in Japan to other financial institutions also helped expand consumer awareness and merchant acceptance of the brand, which in the end helped Sumitomo's Visa portfolio. "Sumitomo's business increased so greatly that they could almost not handle their growth," Pascarella recalls.
