This article appears in the July 2, 2009, edition of ISO&Agent Weekly.

Industryprofessionals have guessed 300, 5,000 and even 10,000 ISOs when askedhow many registered ISOs exist in the United States.

Visa Inc.put the question to rest in recent weeks when it made its lists ofregistered ISOs publicly available on its Web site. The total,according to Visa, is on the lower end of many observers' estimates.

The44-page document contains more than 1,900 entries, however some entriesare duplicates because some companies registered to accept Visa credit and registered again to accept Interlink, Visa's PIN-based point-of-sale debit brand. The list also contains the names of organizations that offer Visa prepaid products.

Visa'slist is available at www.visa.com/isolisting. Details of each entry aresparse, with only a few containing company Web sites.

"I'vebeen asking for this since as far back as 1995," says Joyce Cook,president and CEO of International CyberTrans, a Brentwood, Tenn.-basedISO.   Cook at that time was president of the ElectronicTransaction Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade grouprepresenting ISOs and acquirers.

MasterCard Worldwide says itdoes not intend to release its list of registered ISOs because thesponsoring banks actually hold the information and ISOs may not wantMasterCard to disclose it.

List Release A 'Good Thing'
Cook welcomes Visa'srelease of the list. "It's a good thing because there are a lot ofpeople who are not registered and shouldn't be allowed to represent thebrands," she tells ISO&Agent Weekly.

That appears to be part of the reason why Visa released the list.

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