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Visa is one of the world’s most valuable businesses. It’s a global leader in electronic money transfers, supplying a range of banks and other financial institutions with branded Visa payment products to provide security and convenience to businesses and consumers alike.
Visa was founded in September 1958 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was initially established as the Bank of America’s credit card program, as a direct rival to Mastercard, then known as Master Charge. By 1976, the program rebranded from BankAmericard to Visa.

Today, Visa can process up to 120,000 simultaneous transactions across its four highly secure data centres in Virginia, Colorado, London and Singapore. At the time of writing, Visa is the second biggest card payment provider on the planet after China UnionPay. Although, Visa has a more diverse market share, which can spread the risk when it comes to Visa stock.

Since the public listing of Visa stock, the Visa share price history looks pretty positive for long-term investors. It’s posted all-time growth of 1,185%. More recently, the Visa share price fell off a cliff during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, falling from a high of $210 in February 2020 to $146 by mid-March of the same year.

It has rallied strongly since then, although the Visa stock, like many others intrinsically linked to the financial services sector, struggled in 2022. The Visa share price has fallen over 6% through 2022, due largely to the slowing global economy.
More encouragingly, its Q3 2022 earnings results showed that the payment provider overshot its forecast earnings and subsequently increased its dividend to shareholders by 20%.

Although you would have made a significant sum holding Visa stock a couple of decades ago, there is less chance of experiencing those kinds of returns now that it is firmly established as a market-leading company. Buying into Visa today could therefore bring more downside risk than upside potential.
Of course, if you want greater flexibility with your investments, you could always trade the Visa share price instead, without needing to own the underlying asset.

Using a contract for difference broker, you can go long (buy) or short (sell) on Visa. If you go long and the price rises, you’ll profit and if you go short and the price falls, you’ll also make a profit. It’s a way of adding a second string to your bow.