7:30AM New York – Visa Inc plans to raise $17 billion in public offering.

Visa Inc, the largest credit card processing network filled its plan to list its newly merged companies on the New York Stock Exchange. The offering, long awaited by investors on the success of second largest processor MasterCard, is likely to raise between $15 billion and $17 billion.

Visa Canda, Visa International, and Visa USA will be merged into a newly listed company Visa Inc and will trade under the symbol V. Visa expects to sell 406 million shares in the offering at a price between $37 and $42 per share with an option to sell 40.6 million more share to underwriters.

The largest IPO prior to Visa offering was from AT&T Wireless that raised $10.6 billion according to 123jump.com IPO database of 4,000 offerings.

MasterCard, the second largest processor of credit and debit charge payments offered 61 million shares and was priced at $39 per share and raised $2.45 billion on May 24, 2006. Since then the stock has surged 400% and currently trades around $200 price.

Visa, generates more than twice the revenue than MasterCard and its member banks have issued 1.4 billion charge cards carrying its logo. In twelve months ending on March 31, 2007, card holders spent $3.3 trillion through the electronic network.

MasterCard and Visa are less dependent on the customer payment risk, a key concern of investors in the slowing consumer spending and rising credit card defaults environment in the U.S.

American Express owns the third largest payment processing network but also has debt collection risks as its card holders have account directly with the . American Express in the latest quarter has taken a significant charge to cover such losses. Visa and MasterCard holders have account with a bank issuing a card with either company logos and only process electronic payment for a fee.

Visa Europe is not part of this offering and will remain as an independent organization owned by member firms in Europe.

Of the proceeds raised by Visa, $3 billion will be set aside to pay for ongoing legal negotiations and $10 billion will be used to payback member bank firms. The rest of the proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes.

At the end of 2007, Visa processed charges for $3.23 trillion for 44 billion transactions from 1.4 billion cards. During the same period, MasterCard processed $1.9 trillion for 23.4 billion transactions from 817 million cards. American Express processed $562 billion for 4.5 billion transactions from 78 million cards. Discover has issued 57 million cards and Diners Club network has 7 million cards under its logo.