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Discover Financial Services Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: DFS S&P 500 Component
Industry	Financial services
Founded	1985 as a subsidiary of Sears
Headquarters	Riverwoods, Illinois, U.S.
Key people	David Nelms (Chairman and CEO)
Products	Payment systems
Revenue	$ 6.3 billion (FY 2011) [1]
Operating income	$ 2.5 billion (FY 2011)[1]
Net income	$ 2.2 billion (FY 2011)[1]
Total assets	$ 68.7 billion (FY 2011)[1]
Total equity	$ 8.2 billion (FY 2011)[1]
Website	discover.com

Discover Financial Services is an American financial services company, which issues the Discover Card and operates the Discover and Pulse networks. Discover Card is the third largest credit card brand in the United States, when measured by cards in force, with nearly 50 million cardholders.

History [edit]

The Discover Card was originally introduced by Sears in 1985, and was a unit of Dean Witter, which merged with Morgan Stanley in 1997. In 2007, the unit was spun off as an independent, publicly traded company. Today, Discover is headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Riverwoods, Illinois.

Discover acquires Diners Club [edit]

In April 2008, Discover Financial and Citigroup announced that Discover was purchasing the Diners Club network from Citi for $165 million. In May 2008, the Federal Trade Commission approved the transaction. The deal was completed on July 1, 2008.^[2] Discover stated that the Diners Club network, which is a major network outside North America, will be merged with the Discover Network, a major network in North America, creating an international network for Discover Network cards and Diners Club cards. Diners Club cards will continue to be issued by Diners Club International licensees. Discover Bank has no plans on issuing Diners Club branded cards itself.

Discover acquires Home Loan Center [edit]

On June 6, 2012, Tree.com, Inc. completed the sale of substantially all of the operating assets of its Home Loan Center, Inc. business to a wholly owned subsidiary of Discover Financial. In exchange for the assets sold, Discover paid an aggregate of $45.9 million including payments made prior to the closing which were applied to the closing price.^[3] On June 12, 2012, Discover began originating mortgages with its launch of Discover Home Loans, offering prime variable- and fixed-rate conventional and FHA home mortgage loans.

Competitors [edit]

In the United States, Discover, as a card brand, competes primarily with Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. Unlike Visa and MasterCard, Discover directly issues its cards, through its Discover Bank unit. Discover is the fourth largest credit card issuer, when measured by card balances, behind Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Citi, and ahead of Capital One and American Express.

Business [edit]

In addition to its card products, Discover also markets savings products, personal loans, student loans, and home mortgage loans. The company also began offering a Discover Debit card product directly to banks in 2006, through its Pulse interbank network, which Discover acquired in 2004.

References [edit]

External links [edit]

	Chicago portal
	Companies portal

• Discover Financial Services official corporate site
• Discover Card official credit card site
• Discover Bank official banking services site
• Discover Network official merchant, acquirer, and issuer services site
• Discover Student Loans official private student loan site
• Discover Home Loans official home mortgage loan site