Visa is not centralised. This isnt about a centralised organisation it would be more like a foundation such as the mozilla foundation in my opinion.

As for commodity organisations these exist in Australia and are called such things as a wheat board http://www.awb.com.au/growers in which most of the growers are members and it helps them get better deals than one grower by themself could get.

Conceivably with a guiding foundation at the helm bitcoin may even become accepted by visa itself as a member.

Whatever comes of this has my fullest support. Im in as an evangelist .

My first suggestion would be to form a consortium of interested parties and get a merchant account in each of the major markets ie the US,Europe,Asia etc... With many members each paying a membership fee which equals the yearly merchant account cost it would help spread the load and would mean the foundation would be a non profit. One membership benefit could be cheaper currency conversion.This would immediately stop the scammers and give the bitcoin economy the liquidity it needs to grow.

This would also enable any merchant wanting to accept bitcoin to do so safe  in the knowledge that their cashflow would be assured.

One person or exchange by themself will be a target imo. This can be easily averted.

Such an organisation would not be in charge of Bitcoin. It would simply promote Bitcoin's adoption. Also, there is no reason only one such organisation should exist.

Looking at other foundations attached to different projects it is more about developing standards and guidelines across the industry than about centralising the project.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standards_organization 


Peer to Peer foundation
http://p2pfoundation.net/

Open Source Initiative
http://www.opensource.org/

Free Software Foundation
http://www.fsf.org/

Linux Foundation
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/

XMPP Standards Foundation
http://xmpp.org/

Wikimedia Foundation
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home

Mozilla Foundation
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/

Someone had to create those organisations to begin with Such things as Underwriters Laboratory spring up because it is in the interest of industries to ensure their customers are safe. Walmart is the worlds largest retailer for a reason - because they enforce their processes on their suppliers. They wouldnt let a dodgy product appear on their shelves and risk a lawsuit or lower the standards they set for themselves. You can walk into any mcdonalds in the world and be assured the products will be the same even though each restaurant is owned  by different operators.

I see a bitcoin foundation submitting bitcoin to such things as security audits by third parties to get it rated and tested. Imagine the cachet if someone like steve gibson tested bitcoin and gave it his approval....
Having undisputable proof from third parties and independent auditors that the protocol is indeed as secure as the dev team claims means a lot for confidence.