Ever wonder what the different logos mean on your credit cards? For instance, what is Visa’s role versus that of a company like Capital One?
In simple terms, a company like Capital One is the issuing bank, which funds the transaction; Visa is the card association, which processes them. 
Issuing Banks are financial institutions that issue our credit cards. They lend out the money you use when you make a purchase, and collect the money back, plus interest, when we pay our bill at the end of the month. If we default, the issuing bank will suffer the loss. The issuing bank sets the terms of the credit card agreement and controls items like APR and other fees. While an issuing bank can be any type of financial institution, large or small, 90 percent of all credit card accounts are issued by five banks: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Capital One, and HSBC.
Card associations process the credit card transactions. They are responsible for setting the transaction terms and fees for merchants, as well as the card issuers. Visa and MasterCard are the two largest card associations. While the card associations have a different function than the issuing banks, they are often controlled and even owned by the same interests and groups.
American Express and Discover are hybrids of the two. They are in fact card associations, yet they also act as both the card issuer and the transaction processor. For this reason, you will never see a financial institution’s logo on a card, only that of American Express or Discover.
When it comes to fees and making money, both the card issuer and the card association charge consumers and merchants all kinds of fees.
Consumers ultimately pay the issuing bank interest on the purchases we make. The issuing banks will also charge us late fees and other penalty charges if we don’t pay our bills on time. There are also overlimit fees, and in some cases withdrawal fees from ATMs, though recent government legislation is reviewing and regulating unfair practices.
Merchants too are subject to a host of fees. On each transaction, the merchant must pay a percentage of the total transaction amount, called an interchange fee. Interchange fees depend on a variety of things, including type of credit card and the merchant category.