How is Visa not a monopoly?

Question

I used to a cashier at a book store and about 80% of the credit cards used were Visa.

I thought the federal government was against monopolies like how it broke up AT&T and how Microsoft was almost accused of being one.

Why does the fed not get involved.

Answer 1

Visa is only an infrastructure company that cannot exist unless major banks and institutions use this infrastructure. Equally important major users of this infrastructure are also the owners of the VISA company and they would not allow Visa to act as a monopoly at their expense. Visa is one example of  how to make the best use of a monopoly by competitive market place. So, the greater the proportion of Visa card usage among the population all over the World, lower is the cost of using Visa cards by banks and their customers.

In the case of Microsoft, the users had virtually no say or control over the pricing of the micrsoft programs embedded as as a standard for the the entire family of PC users. The same was true of AT & T.

This is not to suggest that VUISA will not in future become a problem. The wider distribution of ownership of VISA among the banks all over the World is key to its utility. If this goes then VISA would turn into a market monopoly.

The United Nations is an organisation which is unique of its kind. There is no competitor. But UNO is not a monopoly in the real sense.  Even in the Security Council, there are competing forces.

Economics is not  so easy to apple. But when it is applied intelligently, it can turn appasrently bad things into useful things.

Answer 2

Because some where when you use that visa someones getting richer that has stock in the large corporation that owns Visa just like Citibank and all credit card companies are owned by several major corporations. Chances are good that somone is a congressmans lobbiest.