Cybersource
Also a provider — view Cybersource’s profile →“Can Visa's owned gateway remain the neutral acceptance layer of choice for enterprise merchants as Stripe, Adyen and Braintree compress the market from both ends?”
Founded1994
HQFoster City, California, United States
FoundersWilliam S. McKiernan
Latest roundAcquired by Visa Inc. (2010, ~$2B)
IndustryInfrastructure / Payments
The story
Founded 1994 as one of the first internet payment gateways, Cybersource built its franchise around online authorization, fraud management (Decision Manager) and tokenization for large enterprise merchants. The 2007 Authorize.Net acquisition extended it into the US SMB long tail, and Visa's 2010 acquisition folded it into Visa's core acceptance stack. Today Cybersource operates as Visa's global merchant gateway — increasingly branded as 'Visa Acceptance Solutions' — competing structurally with Adyen, Stripe and Braintree while providing rails other PSPs and acquirers plug into.
Last 12 months
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Product timeline
1994
Founded by William S. McKiernan; launched software.net and pioneered online payment / fraud management for medium-and-large merchants.· pivot
1999
IPO on NASDAQ during the dot-com boom.· ipo
2007
Acquired Authorize.Net for $565M, extending reach to SMB payment services.· acquisition
2010
Acquired by Visa Inc. for ~$2B, becoming a wholly-owned Visa subsidiary.· acquisition
2019
Payworks joined Cybersource to develop the next-gen card-present / unified commerce solution.· acquisition
2024
Rebranded product family under 'Visa Acceptance Solutions'; Cybersource is the flagship gateway brand.· pivot
Acquisitions
Same company
Cybersource was analysed under more than one name on the same domain, so its stack is split across these dossiers. Each was analysed independently and may name providers the others do not.
The stack
7 layers disclosed in Cybersource’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Cybersource (self-operated)Authorize.Net (self-operated)Global Payments Directcheckoutglobal payments
Card network
in the full report
Open banking
in the full report
Unified APIs
in the full report
KYC
in the full report
FX & payouts
in the full report
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
11 more providers across 6 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.