Visa is hoping investors will open their wallets and shell out more than $16 billion for what's expected to be the biggest U.S. IPO ever.

More than three months after filing plans for an initial public offering, the leading credit card processor tomorrow provided the much-awaited price and number of shares it expects to sell in its IPO.

Visa plans to sell 406 million shares, or a little more than half the company, for $37 to $42 a share.

If Visa pulls it off, its IPO will top the $10.6 billion raised by AT&T Wireless in April 2000, which had been the biggest U.S. IPO, says Thomson Financial. Visa would also rank as the third-largest global IPO, behind the $22.0 billion IPO of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in October 2006 and the $18.1 billion IPO of NTT Mobile raised in October 1998.

If things go as planned, shares of Visa should be trading by the week of March 19.

So far this year, just 18 companies pulled off their IPOs, down 47 percent from the same period last year, Renaissance Capital says.

Amid a choppy broad market, IPOs in general this year are down 16 percent, Renaissance says.