It’s Black Friday! And that means that it times to talk about spending money. Last year we took a look at internships with Ernst & Young (for companies that are “in the black”). We also look at internships with SlickDeals, one of the best websites for finding Black Friday deals, a few months ago. Today we’re gong to look at Visa, since it’s hard to do any amount of serious shopping without some sort of debit or credit card. Many people think of Visa, which is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, as a credit card company, but that’s not exactly right. Credit cards are backed by a bank or similar financial institution that actually lends you the money to make your purchases. Visa is “a global payments technology company.” That means that they provide the network for your transactions, but they aren’t actually the lending institution backing your credit card.
One thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that payment processors like Visa get a cut of every transaction they enable. It typically comes out to a small percentage of the purchase price—so whether you pay for your lunch or buy a huge tv, the merchant isn’t getting the full amount of the charge. Merchants would make more money per purchase if they only accepted cash, but they’d likely lose a lot of customers that way. Obviously, it’s in Visa’s interest to get as many purchases going across their network as they possibly can. That’s why they’re constantly trying to develop new technologies, products, and services to make it easier to make a purchase using your Visa.
If you’re intrigued by payment processing or just think that Visa is a great brand that you’d like to work for, you should check out their Careers page, their Campus Recruiting page, and their Internships page. There isn’t a ton of information about their internship opportunities, as they don’t have anything posted at the moment, but they do appear to have a solid program with some occasional spectacular opportunities (like interning at the FIFA World Cup). I imagine that there will be new opportunities posted some time in the new year, so keep your eyes peeled and use Visa’sjob search function to search for specific opportunities.
Links to Help You Begin Your Research
Do you have a Visa?
Do I Know Anyone at Visa? - Check LinkedIn | Check Facebook
Tags: accounting, California, finance, information technology, Internships, marketing, operations, sales, strategy
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