Who owns Mastercard?

Question

Zippia Team · Accepted Answer

The Mastercard Foundation owns Mastercard. The company is Mastercard's largest stakeholder, with 11% ownership of the company. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is the second largest stakeholder with 7.8% of Mastercard's common stock.

Mastercard was founded in 1966 and was originally known as Interbank and then Master Charge until being given the current name of Mastercard in 1979. Initially, it was created by a group of several regional bankcard associations to be a competitor against Bank of America's card, which later became known as Visa.

Mastercard became a publicly traded company in 2006. Before then, Mastercard Worldwide was the owner of Mastercard. Mastercard Worldwide is an international membership organization that is jointly owned by around 25,000 banks and other financial institutions.

In 2021, Mastercard had annual revenue of $18.88 billion with a workforce of 24,000 employees.