MasterCard Credit Cards
MasterCard Worldwide has been a publicly traded company since 2006 and was created as a competitor to VISA. Originally brought about by California United Bank, which merged into Wells Fargo Bank, the card was known as MasterCharge until 1979 when it was changed to
MasterCard. In 2006, the company name was officially changed to MasterCard Worldwide to encompass a wider field of operations. The company is currently running a popular advertisement campaign under the headline "There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard." Cards under the company include debit, credit and prepaid options. In 2005, MasterCard introduced PayPass, a system where instead of sliding a card, customers could just tap a payment card or key fob on a payment device. In contrast to VISA's star based network system, MasterCard's network is an edge based, peer-to-peer network that is designed to handle small failures without interfering with other endpoints.