PLAYERS AND THEIR ROLES
American Express (AMEX) is a charge card issuer and acquirer. (Their other businesses are not important to this discussion.) All AMEX purchases are authorized by AMEX. They make most of their money from the discount fees, which is why they have the highest discount fee in the industry. That's one reason why AMEX isn't accepted in as many places as VISA and MC, and a reason why many merchants will prefer another card to an AMEX card. The control AMEX has over authorization allows them to provide what they consider to be better cardholder ("card member" to them) services.
VISA is a non-profit corporation that is best described as a purchasing and marketing coalition of its member banks. VISA issues no credit cards itself - all VISA cards are issued by member banks. VISA does not set terms and conditions for its member banks - the banks can do pretty much as they please in signing cardholders. All VISA charges are ultimately approved by the card issuer, regardless of where the purchase was made.
Many smaller banks share their account databases with larger banks, third parties, or VISA itself, so that the bank doesn't have to provide authorization facilities itself. Master Card (MC) is very much like VISA.
There are some differences that are important to those in the industry, but from the consumers standpoint they operate pretty much the same.
Discover cards are issued by a bank owned by Sears. All Discover purchases are authorized by Sears.
Most petroleum cards, if they are even authorized, are authorized by the petroleum company itself. There are exceptions. Fraud on petroleum cards is so low that the main reason for authorization is to achieve the float reduction of electronic settlement.
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