Into the gloom of the current markets comes a small sparkle of excitement: the Visa IPO. Marketwatch reports that the offering will be a blockbuster, and that its March 20 offering date is already oversubscribed.

Visa, Inc., based in San Francisco, plans to offer over 400 million shares for between $37-$42. Based on the midpoint of that range, the company would raise over $15 billion.

This would be more than the market value of Visa's largest rival, Mastercard(NYSE:MA), IPO two years ago, which was $10 billion. Mastercards' shares subsequently soared 408%, according to Dealbook.

Visa currently leads marketshare with 60% of the worldwide credit market compared to Mastercard's 26% share.

Hard economic times can be great for credit card companies, since they don't own the debt. They grab a transaction fee from every purchase, and those swipes tend to happen more frequently when people are feeling cash poor.

One of the years most touted and anticipated IPOs is sure to be that of Visa. The credit card company has filed for the IPO and investors were eagerly awaiting the debut. That was until yesterday. News from American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP) that customers are having trouble paying back loans, and paying off monthly payments on their credit card debt, sent the stock down over 10%. MasterCard Inc. (NYSE: MA) stock dropped more than 8% on the bad news as well.

With the stock market taking it on the chin, and now this bit of bad news in their industry, will we see the planned offering delayed? I think there is a fair chance that there will be a delay. The IPO market usually takes time to recover from a market beating of this sort. Investors are usually a bit gun-shy to pull the trigger on some new hi-tech issue. Visa on the other hand is not going to be your typical IPO. The company is obviously going to have a market cap in the tens of billions of dollars, and institutions will want a piece of the company. Still, that being said, they will want to have the same type of IPO that MasterCard had last year, and I would expect the underwriters to hold this offering until we see some continued market strength.

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. DISCLOSURE: Writer has no positions in any stock mentioned as of 1/12/08

Visa is the biggest retail electronic payments network (the cards are accepted in over 170 countries), and its brand is one of the world's most recognized. Now, investors will get a chance to buy shares in the company.

Late Friday, the company filed the necessary papers for an IPO. And it should be a doozy, perhaps raising more than $10 billion.

Visa gets revenues from card service fees, data processing fees, and international transaction fees. And it all certainly adds up. For the first nine months of 2007, Visa generated revenues of $3.7 billion and net income of $771 million.

Of course, in May of last year, rival MasterCard (NYSE: MA) went public. So far, it is up a sizzling 390%. So, expect investors to pile on the Visa deal.

Visa's lead underwriters include JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS).

You can visit the SEC website for the prospectus. Also, you can check out other recent IPO activity at DealProfiles.com.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

The IPO of MasterCard (NYSE: MA) has been, well, priceless.

So, it should be no surprise that rival Visa is prepping for its own public offering. In fact, today the company filed some preliminary forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission to kick-start the process.

Despite competition from American Express (NYSE: AXP), Morgan Stanley's (NYSE: MS) Discover and MasterCard, Visa is still the biggest player in the space.

However, in order to pull of its offering, Visa needs to reorganize things (such as combining with its Canadian operations). But this should be fairly straightforward.

The IPO is likely to hit the markets later in the year – and I suspect it will be a big hit. It will also be a nice payday for the consortium of banks that own the firm, such as Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).

You can check out the filing at the SEC website.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.