Card association
A card association is a network of issuing banks and acquiring banks that process payment cards of a specific brand.Examples
Familiar payment card association brands include China UnionPay, RuPay, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, Troy and JCB. Visa, MasterCard and American Express issuers co-brand with their card association. for example, "Wells Fargo Visa" or "Citi MasterCard".Statistics
Card associations Visa and MasterCard each comprise over 20,000 card issuing banks.
Among United States consumers alone, over 600 million payment cards are in circulation.
Worldwide, Visa issuers have over 1.5 billion payment cards in circulation.
