Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…Totally wild. But because of this, a whole bunch of consumers start unconsciously switching the bank that issues their Visa card. Once this starts happening, this kicks off a total arms race, where all the banks in the network are now like, shoot, we got to blanket the whole country, preserve our domain, and see what we can capture from others. In the one year between when the Visa name change first comes online and takes effect, which is in 1977 and the next year in 1978, the number of banks participating in the Visa system grows by 20%, because everybody who's not in the system now is like, I got to get in the Visa system. By the way, this is the thing that pushes Visa ahead of what was, I believe, then called Master Charge. The Interbank had changed Master Charge, they hadn't yet turned it to MasterCard. But in 1976, Master Charge was actually bigger. They had 7400 banks. At this point in history, Visa had about 7000 banks. Master Charge also had more card holders, 37 million versus BankAmericard's 31 million before they change to Visa. Despite all the deck chair rearranging between the member banks, it was great for Visa to leap ahead of MasterCard. Totally. The number of member banks grows by 20%. The number of active card holders in the Visa network in this one year grows by 45%.…

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