Will the United States and United Kingdom continue to reserve the title of favorite holiday destinations of travelers in the next two years? Who are the world’s most generous travelers and how much does good food help in getting travelers to visit a country again?
The answers to these questions, and more, from the Visa Global Travel Intentions Survey 2011 report are available for download from today. In its sixth year, the report provides an in-depth look and analysis into international travel trends and travel behavior globally.
Interesting findings include:
• Indian travelers are leading the pack in terms of medical tourism, with 23 percent spending on healthcare and medical services while on holiday, compared to the global average of 11 percent.
• Apart from travelers from Hong Kong who still largely rely on travel magazines, the rest of the world’s travelers seek information online.
• Moroccans enjoy the longest breaks with 61 percent stating they plan to stay more than 20 nights while away on holiday.
To view the full findings and insights, download the Visa Global Travel Intentions Survey 2011 here.
When people think of Visa, inventing may not be the first thing that comes to mind. However, as one of the largest global payments technology companies, innovation has been key to Visa’s growth for more than 50 years. This long standing commitment to progress has enabled more people in more places to enjoy the benefits of electronic payments across a wide spectrum of devices, platforms and channels.
Innovating keeps us at the forefront of the payments industry. Across the organization, at every level, employees are encouraged to invent better ways expand the reach and value of digital currency through new channels, devices and products.
We talked to some of our inventors on camera to learn more about how innovation and intellectual property connects to our past and, more importantly, to our future.
We’ve received a lot of positive feedback since Visa announced a roadmap for the U.S. adoption of EMV chip cards and NFC-enabled mobile payment devices. There’s growing consensus in the industry that it makes a lot of sense to encourage investments in chip technology. That’s because it adds a layer of safety to transactions, through the use of dynamic authentication, as well as enhances international card acceptance. And it helps to build an acceptance infrastructure to support mobile payments.
Now that the presents have been opened and the holidays are behind us, those who unwrapped a Visa Gift card are beginning to log in online and speed through checkout lines as they purchase those perfect gifts. Whether it’s used at any of the millions of brick and mortar locations that accept Visa Debit cards, online, or by phone – shoppers are experiencing the convenience and flexibility the Visa Gift card offers to shop where they want for what they want.
How will people use their Visa Gift cards?
According to the recent Visa Gift Giving Survey, people will spend their Visa Gift card in the following ways:
61% Indulging in something they might not normally be able to buy/afford
58% Buying “life essentials” such as groceries or paying bills
41% Using it to help purchase gifts for other people
Follow these simple tips when using a Visa Gift card:
Activate and Read: The gift card is activated upon purchase, so the recipient can begin using the card immediately. Recipients should be sure to read the issuer’s terms and conditions of their Visa Gift card, which are included in the original packaging, or can be found on the issuer’s web site.
Use It: The card was given as a gift, and it’s important to use it early to enjoy the full benefits of the gift. If the purchase price exceeds the value of the gift card, another form of payment can be provided in addition to the gift card. Tip: Recipients can send a thank you note to the gift giver letting them know what was purchased with the card.
When Paying – Know the Balance and Choose “Credit:” Know the value remaining on the Visa Gift card before shopping, either by calling the card issuer or checking the balance online. When paying in person, card holders should select the “credit” option as the payment method when checking out.
We continue to see new ways prepaid can be a platform for innovation in payments. A great example: Intuit’s recent launch of the GoPayment Prepaid Visa Card.
Those who use Intuit’s GoPayment mobile acceptance app and reader can now link their GoPayment account to a Visa prepaid card, conveniently separating the funds collected through GoPayment from other finances. The card can then be used to make payments online or in-store, as well as to withdraw cash at ATMs anywhere Visa debit cards are accepted.
TechCrunch said the GoPayment Prepaid Visa Card “makes GoPayment especially friendly for fledgling entrepreneurs or businesses who want to accept payments but don’t have a business bank account.”
GoPayment users can choose where they’d like to accept payments, whether to an existing business or personal account, or to the GoPayment Prepaid Visa Card.
Products like this show how the flexibility of the Visa prepaid platform allows our prepaid partners to create tailored products to meet the evolving payments landscape.
Last night, ABC’s Nightline aired a segment highlighting Visa’s role in the global economy and the “technology behind the swipe,” featuring Visa’s President, John Partridge and Mike Dreyer, our Global Head of Technology. Millions of people each day swipe their cards to shop, particularly in this busy holiday season, but few appreciate the technology and investment that allows it to happen while keeping your personal data safe.
That’s why we were excited to work with Nightline on the story to look more closely at the state- of-the-art technology that enables our network to be secure, reliable and scalable – and importantly, manage the high peak time transaction volumes driven by the season. Every day, VisaNet connects up to 1.9 billion Visa accounts, millions of acceptance locations, 1.8 million ATMs and 15,500 financial institutions around the world, so making sure every one of those connections is safe and secure is incredibly important to us. We even gave Nightline access to our control room in our data center, where they could see the 50 years of experience and investments we apply to ensure Visa account holders can swipe their cards with absolute peace of mind.
Our data center employees took the Nightline crew on a full tour of the facility, talking through the elements that keep our network going, including our server redundancy, heating, cooling and power capabilities, and our external building security. These elements work together without fail every day, even during the holiday rush to buy last minute gifts!
When it comes to making purchases, a fundamental consumer expectation is that the price advertised will be the price paid at checkout. Penalizing the consumer through added fees or “surcharges” is a practice Visa strongly opposes and is viewed as harmful for unfairly shifting the cost of electronic payments onto consumers.
Recently, the Consumers’ Association of Canada (CAC) released study results on Canadian attitudes towards choice and surcharging at the point of sale. The study affirmed Visa’s strong, pro-consumer sentiments – consumers do not want to be penalized for using their preferred method of payment. In fact, 84% of Canadians oppose surcharging when they choose to pay by credit card and 90% believe they should have the right to choose their preferred payment method be it cash, debit or credit.
The Canadian Competition Bureau is attempting to eliminate Visa’s “no-surcharging and honour all cards” protections for consumers. This is an action that Visa vehemently contests.
Visa’s ‘no surcharging’ policy was created specifically to protect consumers from merchants who seek to impose checkout fees, punishing consumers who choose the convenience, security and reliability of Visa over other methods of payment. 90% of those surveyed by the CAC were unaware of the Competition Bureau initiative to allow merchants to reject a particular form of payment. Visa’s “honour all cards” protection was implemented to prevent merchants from reaching into consumers’ wallets and dictating which payment products they can use. The policy requires that any merchant who elects to accept Visa products for payment must accept all Visa-branded cards. Canadian merchants are able to choose to accept only credit or debit domestically issued cards without having to accept both according to the Voluntary Code of Conduct for the Debit and Credit Industry. Removing this pro-consumer policy will lead to consumer confusion and eliminate consumer choice at the point-of-sale.
Evidence indicates that in those few countries that permit surcharging today, including Australia and the United Kingdom, many merchants have been penalizing their customers with excessive surcharges that far exceed the cost of card acceptance. Surcharges in Australia are now as high as 10 per cent; well above the one to three percent merchants pay their banks for card acceptance. In fact, the Australian situation has become so contentious, that the Payments System Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia is now undertaking a review of their surcharge standards.
Visa remains committed to empowering consumers through a choice of products and resources that allow them to conveniently and responsibly manage their finances. As such, it’s critical that Canadian policymakers review the findings of the CAC study to understand why there will be resounding opposition to any attempts to impose additional checkout fees or dictating which payments products a consumer can use.
If seeing is believing, then my recent trip to Mexico re-opened my eyes to the real benefits of digital currency, particularly in the lives of low-income families around the world. During a whirlwind four-day trip, we captured the experience of Angélica Cruz Romero, who receives her government benefits on the Oportunidades Visa card, as part of the Currency of Progress video series.
Angélica lives in a modest home on the outskirts of San Juan del Rio, a city of 120,000 people in the state of Querétaro. She is one of millions of formerly unbanked or under-banked Mexican consumers who receives social benefits on a prepaid debit card that keeps her money safe and can be used anywhere Visa is accepted.
As part of the visit, we also interviewed Bernardo González, general associate director of Bansefi, the government-owned issuer of the Visa card. In the coming months, Bansefi aims to include all 6.5 million beneficiaries in the Visa debit card program as part of its long-term goal to reduce poverty by bringing more Mexicans into the formal financial system. “This is absolute[ly] the door to financial inclusion,” he said.
For Angélica, receiving funds electronically gives her peace-of-mind, flexibility and the promise of a better life for her family. I’m very optimistic because I’m taking my children on the right path,” she said. “And this program has helped me a lot because I am heading in the right direction where I wasn’t before.”
Outside on the streets of Kigali, the constant bleats from motorbike horns provide the distinctly African soundtrack. Only steps away, but oblivious to the commotion, are 20 Rwandan college students from the School of Finance and Banking who are sitting inside a customized ICT Bus helping shape the future of financial literacy in this “Land of a thousand hills.”
As part of Visa’s announcement with the Government of Rwanda this week in Rwanda, we also began the process of working collaboratively with the government to bring our financial literacy expertise to the country.
And while we are experts in delivering innovative personal finance education, only Rwandans have that unique perspective on what will resonate most with their fellow countrymen.
Rwandans are optimistic and understandably proud of their densely-packed nation and the college students take seriously their responsibility of helping us create a customized version of the educational video game “Financial Football” for their country.
Which is what brings these students to this mobile computer lab, equipped with 20 of the latest laptops. Each has “Financial Football” up on their screen and is putting the free game through its paces. Some are testing in English, others in Kinyarwanda, but all have the same goal: ensuring the final version of the fast-paced, money management game will engage and educate their peers.
Government officials, including the Governor of the National Bank of Rwanda and the Minister of Information and Communications Technology, joined Visa in coming to see the students in action. They saw firsthand what will be needed to create relevant personal finance questions, which serve as the core of the game. Players answer multiple-choice questions correctly to advance down the field for a chance to score a goal, all while learning key concepts about saving, responsible spending and budgeting.
The process will take several months, but in the end, Rwandans will have taken another step in shaping their own future and making this country a shining star in the heart of Africa.
I am delighted to be posting this blog from Kigali, Rwanda where, along-side Ambassador Claver Gatete, Governor of the National Bank of Rwanda, we just announced a new public-private partnership between Visa and the Government of Rwanda to electronify financial services.
Why have we entered into this partnership and what is it all about?
At Visa, we believe that everyone has a right to access basic financial and payment services. And over the past six months, we have been working closely with the Government of Rwanda to forge a partnership to accelerate the delivery of such services to the Rwandan population.
Today, we are proud to share an overview of our collective labors: a Charter of Collaboration aimed at developing localized solutions to extend access to financial services to local and international consumers throughout the country.
The Charter of Collaboration encompasses 12 initiatives structured around three key areas identified by the Government of Rwanda and Visa as vital to the development of a fully-inclusive financial system:
Laying the Foundations for Electronic Payments – We have committed to working together to develop the basic infrastructure requirements which will enable country-wide use of electronic payments. This means facilitating the widespread issuance and acceptance of payment cards and the localization of clearing and settlement services.
Promoting Electronic Payments Innovation –Secondly, we have agreed towork to ensure that Rwanda can take advantage of modern technologies to reach Rwandans who are under-served by traditional payments infrastructure. I expect mobile payments to be a big part of this solution and we’ll talk more about that in the coming months.
Capacity Building –Finally, building a robust electronic payment infrastructure requires more than products and technology. To ensure long-term economic success, we have committed to delivering a coordinated and sustained program of capacity building. This will comprise a range of initiatives designed to increase financial literacy and provide industry training and experience for local Rwandans.
You can see the detail of the Charter itself by following this link.
Public-private partnership is a cornerstone of Rwanda’s approach to development. It is also a key component of Visa’s global growth strategy as well. To me, this Charter has all the makings of a classic win-win and we’ll be certain to keep you informed of progress
