The move by the San Francisco-based Visa, which is an association owned by banks, follows MasterCard's move last May to go public. Visa is currently a private membership association jointly owned by more than 20,000 financial institutions around the world.
Earlier Wednesday, Visa said it plans to combine Visa Canada, Visa USA, and Visa International into a new public global corporation to be known as Visa Inc. Once that is complete, the company aims to begin the IPO process.
S&P placed its "A" long-term and "A-1" short-term counterparty ratings for Visa International on negative watch, while Moody's changed the outlook on its "A1" senior long-term debt and "P1" short-term to negative from stable.
"It is our understanding that within the process of converting to a publicly traded for-profit company, Visa will most likely discontinue the right for special assessments of its members," S&P's credit analyst Daniel Koelsch said in a statement. "This has been a major ratings factor in our ratings on Visa."
