Stakes are huge for Visa in series of legal card games

June 21, 2002
It may be everywhere you want to be, but Visa is finding itself in places it would rather not: Courtrooms from New York to Oakland, where legal battles threaten to rock the secretive credit card association to its core.
At stake for San Francisco-based Visa U.S.A. is its commanding market share of 51 percent and, potentially, billions of dollars in court-ordered payments.
But what's also at risk is the bedrock on which banks have built their huge credit-card businesses around Visa: the guarantee to consumers that any Visa-branded card would be accepted by the merchant on the other side of the counter.
While Visa's market share has long had the clout to keep both retailers and its member banks in line, cracks in that foundation are now showing in court. Chafing under the costs associated with some of Visa's cards, large retailers want to pick and choose which cards they accept.
Meanwhile, some of its own member banks may win the right to offer cards from its most feared rival: American Express.
And Visa's lucrative business of converting foreign purchases into dollar payments has come under fire in suits by consumers.