Visa Inches Toward IPO

Visa

made its first steps towards an initial public offering on Friday.

The San Francisco credit card company offered detailed plans on how it will restructure the business, in a filing with the

Securities and Exchange Commission

.

The company plans to combine several subsidiaries, including Visa Canada, Visa International and Visa USA, into a single private stock company called Visa Inc. Visa Europe will remain a membership association.

"Once the SEC has completed its review and declared the registration statement effective, Visa will undertake a global process to secure member approval of the restructuring," the company said in a press release.

Visa's plans for an IPO come at a time when interest in credit card companies has been high.

Shares of

MasterCard

(MA) - Get Report

, Visa's rival, have quadrupled since May 2006, when the Purchase, N.Y., company came public at $39 a share.

At the end of the month,

Morgan Stanley

(MS) - Get Report

is spinning off its slower-growth credit card business, Discover Financial Services. The stock is currently trading on a "when-issued" basis.

Discover has a slightly different business model than MasterCard and Visa. Besides being a card issuer, it also has a payments network behind it like

American Express

(AXP) - Get Report

.

"The secular growth that is in the sector should continue for many reasons," says Craig Maurer, an analyst at Calyon Securities, a division of Credit Agricole. Most important, "the conversion from paper to plastic is going to go on for a very long time when you look at it on a global basis."

The U.S. is far more advanced in using credit cards and debit cards than countries such as China and Russia, Maurer says.

"That's just a sliver of the opportunity that these companies have," he says.