Visa Inc.

Visa’s moat is anchored by a massive two‑sided network where each new cardholder increases acceptance value and each incremental acceptance point increases cardholder utility.

This classic network effect is reinforced by high switching costs for issuers, merchants and ecosystem partners that have deeply integrated Visa rails, rules, risk tools and certifications. Efficient scale in global processing (VisaNet reliability measured in six‑to‑nine‑nines) and a powerful brand add further barriers.

The network’s breadth (4.7B credentials, 150M+ merchant locations) and ~234B processed transactions in FY24 create scale advantages in authorization quality, fraud prevention and AI models that are hard to match.

Risks that could chip away at the moat include regulatory fee caps, merchant steering, domestic networks, and A2A real‑time payment systems, but Visa’s strategy to be a network of networks and to expand into money movement and value‑added services has been steadily thickening the moat over time.