PaySlate Payments: 6 Gateways, 21 Ways to Get Paid

Visa began in 1958 when Bank of America mailed the first BankAmericard to 60,000 residents of Fresno, California. Licensed to banks through the 1960s, it was unified under the Visa name in 1976. Visa issues no cards itself; it runs VisaNet, the network that authorizes and settles for the banks that do.

Founded in 1966 when a group of banks formed the Interbank Card Association to compete with BankAmericard. Known as Master Charge until 1979, it now runs a worldwide processing network from Purchase, New York, issuing credit and debit products through partner banks.

Founded in 1850 in Buffalo, New York, as an express freight and mail business, Amex spent its first century moving money orders and travelers cheques. Its first charge card arrived in 1958. It runs a closed loop, acting as both network and issuer, which funds its rewards and travel perks.

Launched in 1985 by Sears and introduced during the 1986 Super Bowl with a then-radical pitch: no annual fee and cash back. It built its own network, Pulse, and acquired Diners Club International in 2008. Capital One announced an agreement to acquire Discover in 2024.

Founded in 1950 in New York by Frank McNamara and Ralph Schneider, it was the first independent multi-merchant charge card, born from the idea of settling a restaurant bill without cash. Balances were paid in full monthly rather than revolving. It is owned today by Discover Financial Services.

Japan Credit Bureau launched in Tokyo in 1961 and is the only international card scheme to originate in Japan. It expanded abroad through acceptance partnerships, so a card issued in Tokyo works across much of the world.

Founded in 2002 in Shanghai under the People’s Bank of China to standardize the country’s card market. It has issued roughly 10 billion cards, more than Visa and Mastercard combined, and is accepted in more than 180 countries and regions.

Launched by Mastercard in 1991 as the world’s first global point-of-sale debit brand, Maestro was a staple of everyday banking in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Central Europe. Designed for the physical checkout, it never adapted cleanly to e-commerce. Mastercard began retiring it in 2023, replacing it with Debit Mastercard.

Launched by Apple in 2014 for stores, apps and the web, authenticated with Face ID or Touch ID. It settles as an ordinary card payment behind the scenes and is heavily used across the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Western Europe.

It began as Google Wallet in 2011, relaunched as Android Pay in 2015, unified as Google Pay in 2018 and later folded back into the Google Wallet brand. It tokenizes the underlying card, so merchants receive it as a standard payment.

Introduced in 2015, it launched with MST, a technology that could transmit to older magnetic-stripe terminals as well as NFC readers. That capability is being phased out and the product has largely merged into Samsung Wallet. It is a default for a huge share of South Korea.

Founded in 1998 as Confinity, merged with X.com in 2000, public in 2002, acquired by eBay the same year and spun back out in 2015. It serves well over 400 million active accounts and owns both Venmo and Braintree.

Founded in 2009 in Philadelphia, acquired by Braintree in 2012 and by PayPal in 2013. Its social feed, where payments appear with emojis and captions, made it iconic. It remains United States only, but within that market it is enormous.

Launched in 2013 as Square Cash, it grew from peer-to-peer transfers into a full financial hub with the Cash Card, stock investing and bitcoin, all tied to a user’s cashtag. It is a cultural fixture among younger Americans and has expanded to the United Kingdom.

Launched in 2007 to extend Amazon’s trust and stored payment details to third-party merchants. It even supports voice payments through Alexa, and has been a growth focus in India and parts of Europe.

Launched in 2004 by Alibaba and now run by Ant Group, Alipay began as an escrow service that made shopping on Taobao safe. It grew into a super-app serving well over a billion users, bundling QR payments, savings, credit and insurance into one screen.

Launched in 2013 by Tencent inside WeChat. Its breakout moment came in 2014 with digital red packets, a viral twist on the tradition of gifting money that drove mass adoption almost overnight.

Founded in Stockholm in 2005 by Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth and Victor Jacobsson. It now reaches more than 150 million consumers and hundreds of thousands of merchants, and listed publicly in 2025. It is strongest in the Nordics and Germany, with fast growth in the United States.

Founded in Melbourne in 2014 by Nick Molnar and Anthony Eisen, Afterpay pioneered the pay-in-4 model. It earns from merchant fees rather than customer interest, which resonated with shoppers wary of traditional credit, and was acquired by Block in 2022.