Elaborative SWOT Analysis of Visa – An American Multinational Financial Services Corporation

Updated on: Dec 21, 2021
SWOT Analysis of Visa - Featured Image

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In our previous blog, we have discussed the in-depth SWOT analysis of American Express – the banking and financial services providers. In this blog, we aim to cover the SWOT analysis of Visa. The objective is to gain insights into the services of banking and financial providers.

Visa Inc. is one of the most dominant and recognized players among payment brands, all around the globe. It is known for providing transactions between consumers, banks, financial institutions, governments and businesses. Visa helps its consumers make fast, reliable and secure electronic payments all over the world.

The reason why this financial institute grew so big and the strategy behind the growth is it’s implementing some of the most successful marketing techniques using digital platforms as most of the customers are online nowadays. So if you are interested in learning the latest skills in digital marketing – check out our Free MasterClass on Digital Marketing 101 by the CEO and Founder of IIDE, Karan Shah.

Before we go into the SWOT Analysis of Visa, let us know about Visa as a company.

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About Visa

SWOT Analysis of Visa - Visa Cards

Visa Inc is a popular American multinational financial services company established in the year 1958 and it is headquartered in California, United States. It enables electronic money transfer across the world through Visa-branded gift cards, credit cards, and debit cards.

It is a type of payment card that uses the Visa network to alter payments. In addition to credit cards, Visa has extended its reach to offer Visa Debit cards, Visa Signature, Visa Platinum, Visa Gold, Visa Classic and Visa Infinite with financial institutions to come up with bank-specific Visa cards.

The company also addresses payment information and related data. Its portfolio offerings consist of payment cards, commercial payments, transaction processing services, digital services, and merchant solutions. 

It delivers financial institutions with Visa-branded payment products that are used to provide debit, credit, pre-paid and cash access programs to Visa customers. All Visa transactions across the world are processed through Visanet at their respective secure facilities. The company also offers its services in America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa.

Quick Stats on Visa
Founder Dee Hock
Year Founded 1958
Origin Fresno, California, U.S.
No. of Employees 20,500+
Company Type Public
Market Cap $ 460.58 Billion (2021)
Annual Revenue $ 21.85 Billion (2020)
Net Income/ Profit $ 10.87 Billion (2020)

 

SWOT Analysis of Visa - Visa Range of Cards
(Visa Range of Cards, Source: Visa)


Products & Services by Visa

  • Credit Cards
  • Debit Cards
  • Prepaid Cards
  • Payment Systems
  • Electronic Funds Transfer

Competitors of Visa

  • Mastercard
  • American Express
  • Discover card
  • Capital One
  • PayPal
  • Bank of America
  • J P Morgan Chase


Now that we have understood about the company let’s take a deep dive into the SWOT analysis of Visa.


SWOT Analysis of Visa

Talking about Visa’s business, let’s understand how this corporation can cater to different individuals using SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis of Visa helps us to understand companies through the lens of internal and external factors. Strength and weakness are based on internal factors whereas opportunities and threats rely on external factors of the bank.

To better understand the SWOT analysis of Visa, refer to the infographics below:

SWOT Analysis of Visa - SWOT Infographics of Visa

Below is a step-by-step detailed guide to help you with the SWOT analysis of Visa.

Strengths of Visa

  • Largest Market Share: The company has the largest share base in the United States as it operates on a global level. It is also a leading operator of digital transactions and a segment leader in the market.
  • Innovative Products: It has a successful track record of developing new innovative products according to the needs and changing customer behaviours and requirements to attract their customer base and to be able to satisfy their customer needs.
  • Secured Dossier Centres: Visa’s dossier centres are secured heavily against crime, natural disorders, and terrorism. It can handle about 30,000 concurrent transactions and about 100 billion computations per second. Every transaction is checked against 500 variables, including about 100 fraud detection parameters like the location, merchant’s location, and customer spending behaviour.
  • Endorsements: Visa has many sponsored events such as Visa Newsroom, Olympics, the Paralympics, FIFA and events happening on a global level.
  • Currency Of Progress: It has launched a program to better educate the world about how digital currency advances economic empowerment and business competence worldwide. It supports the agreement and currency modifications for stable coins such as USDC.


Weaknesses of Visa

  • Risk & Hazards: Visa is highly exposed to risk and fraud. The internal analysis gives insights into Visa’s weak transaction system that sometimes lead to major duping payments and due to this problem, customers doubt the veracity of the company and its products thus Visa transactions might lead to chaos at times.
  • Abortive in Integrating Firms with Many Work Abilities: Visa is not highly successful at integrating firms with many work abilities and they are not able to focus on many things one at a time so there are not able to adjust to terms and conditions according to the needs of the company and that is why they only what they can handle well. 
  • Disagreements are Seen in the Product Range: There have been few differences seen in the products sold by Visa. It can also be a sign of weakness as this inadequacy of choice can create a new competitor with a better product than the company. Conclusion: there is a loss of customer base and that overall will affect the company’s position in the financial market.
  • Probe and Expansion: Investment in research and development are a little less as analysed by the continuous growth of players in the financial industry. Although Visa spends a ransom amount of money on probe and expansion, it backslides to compete with its competitors in the industry concerning innovation.
  • High Dependency Rate: Visa has a high dependency rate on contractual relationships with large clients. It has a large base of clients from almost all around the world so it is dependent on these persons to do that work due to a healthy relationship with their clients.


Opportunities for Visa

  • Upgradation in Technology: Visa’s new technology offers a convenience to practice distinguished price strategy in the new market. It can maintain its firm customers by providing great service and also able to attract some new customers utilizing value-oriented proposals. Thus by upgrading their technology they are trying to attract a huge crunch of major customer base.

SWOT Analysis of Visa - Visa Enable Next-Gen of Digital Payments
(Visa Enable Next-Gen of Digital Payments, Source: EPI)

  • E-currency: The across world use of digital currency at the international level has seen a big indication for Visa. By this, customers can easily do transactions with money by sending money to their relatives living abroad from any part of the world.

Honestly speaking, digital transformation has made it easy for people to do whatever they want, no matter wherever they are. Not only Visa, other online payments, scan payment facilities and UPI transfer facilities have also made our life sorted from the fuss of cash payments. People have understood the benefits of digitalization and the easement of online working, which is why businesses and brands are continuously learning and implementing various digital marketing skills to establish their online business and bring the relief of doing business in their life.   

  • New Industry: Visa opens up new markets in the industry due to concessions with the government. This has helped Visa to adopt new high tech standards and also government free trade agreements. Visa proved itself as an emerging player entering the market and selling its product range.
  • Fall in the Inflation Rate: The low inflation rate has bought more security in the market thereby enabling credit at a low-interest rate to the customers of Visa. All the players in the market are now feeling secure as the inflation has now come down and now they can purchase things easily because the demand is now on the lower side. 


Threats to Visa

  • Global Transactions: As Visa is being operated across the globe, it is exposed to currency fluctuations as different countries have different currencies so these fluctuations happen because the price differs from country to country. It happens in a volatile political climate in many markets all over the world.
  • Less Experienced Workforce: Visa faces a shortage of experienced workforce in many global level markets that are a threat to the current product and not having enough workforce comes as a threat to the company in the future.
  • Competing Environment: The highly competitive environment in the financial market is very much dangerous for Visa. It has big rivals, including Mastercard as well as digital payments companies such as PayPal and they are also the most established companies in the prevailing market. Thus Visa has to make its USP if they want to survive in the market.


This ends our elaborative SWOT analysis of Visa. Let us conclude our learning below.

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To Conclude

Visa Inc is a well-known card company with an impactful global presence. In the SWOT Analysis of Visa, we inspected that the company is heavily susceptible, enjoys strong brand recognition and a bond of trust with its customers. It has strong logistics and has reached across all the markets it serves, but it suffers from an increasing number of manufactures in the same space and better efforts by the competitors.

With rising competition in an infused market such as other card services, companies are left to strive it out by winning over their customers with better marketing skills. In a dynamic atmosphere where digital marketing is of utmost importance, being well informed in the field is very crucial for all the marketing buff people.

If you are eager to learn more and want to kick-start your career in digital marketing, check out IIDE’s 3 Month Advanced Online Digital Marketing Course to know more.

We hope this blog on the SWOT Analysis of Visa has given you a good insight into the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. You can also read our comprehensive study on the SWOT Analysis of JP Morgan Chase.

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Aditya Shastri

Lead Trainer & Head of Learning & Development at IIDE

Leads the Learning & Development segment at IIDE. He is a Content Marketing Expert and has trained 6000+ students and working professionals on various topics of Digital Marketing. He has been a guest speaker at prominent colleges in India including IIMs......[Read full bio]

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