>"Prior to its initial public offering, MasterCard Worldwide was a cooperative owned by the 25,000+ financial institutions that issue its branded cards."

>"Prior to October 3, 2007, Visa comprised four non-stock, separately incorporated companies that employed 6000 people worldwide: Visa International Service Association (Visa), the worldwide parent entity, Visa U.S.A. Inc., Visa Canada Association, and Visa Europe Ltd"

From their respective Wikipedia company pages.

Neither of those citations actually say anything about profit one way or the other. They certainly don't appear to have ever had 501c status.

How does that have anything to do with being non-profit?

MasterCard Worldwide was a non-profit cooperative until 2006.

For some reason I'd thought that for-profit cooperatives existed. Thanks!

They do.A lot of coops are for-profit.

E.g. it is common for cooperative store-chains to pay out dividends from profits to all members proportional to the amount of money you spend with them.