Mastercard Incorporated or MasterCard Worldwide is an American multinational financial services corporation with its headquarters in the MasterCard International Global Headquarters, Purchase, Harrison, New York, United States. Throughout the world, its principal business is to process payments between the banks of merchants and the card issuing banks or credit unions of the purchasers who use the "MasterCard" brand debit and credit cards to make purchases. MasterCard Worldwide has been a publicly traded company since 2011. The company was created by two entrepreneurs in Louisville, Ky. named Raymond Tanenhaus and Stanley Benovitz. It was absorbed by the United California Bank in year 1966. Prior to its initial public offering, MasterCard Worldwide was a cooperative owned by the 30,000+ financial institutions that issue its card.MasterCard, originally known as Master Charge.The European Union has repeatedly expressed concern over the dominance of Mastercard. In April 2009, Mastercard reached a settlement with the European Union in an antitrust case, promising to reduce debit card payments to 0.2 percent of a purchase.In December 2010, a senior official from the European Central Bank called for a break-up of the Visa/Mastercard duopoly by creation of a new European debit card for use in the Single Euro Payments Area.