Viewpoints

Visa’s Blog – Visa Viewpoints

PERSPECTIVES ON DIGITAL CURRENCY

Sep 29, 2010

Global Financial Literacy: Then and Now

The global recession taught the world many lessons. One of the most urgent of those lessons is the need for financial education. For 15 years, Visa has been a private sector leader in developing free, high-quality financial literacy programs for parents, teachers, students and consumers. With more and more prominent voices echoing our belief that we need to improve financial literacy levels, we wanted to share one best practice that contributes to our successful impact on better consumer behavior: culturally tailored literacy programs.

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Posted by: Jason Alderman, Visa Corporate Relations on September 29, 2010 at 5:02 pm

Category: About Visa, Corporate Responsibility, Financial Literacy
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Sep 24, 2010

Rightcliq Celebrates Fall with Fashion Tips from WhoWhatWear.com

As a leading payment choice for eCommerce, Visa is trusted by consumers when it comes to making online purchases. Innovations like the recently launched Rightcliq by Visa — an online shopping tool that addresses shoppers’ needs before, during and after checkout — extends that legacy.

Since its launch, Rightcliq by Visa has made the process of online shopping simpler and smarter for consumers, merchants and now, fashion editors.

As fashion experts and founders of WhoWhatWear.com, consumers look to editors Katherine Power and Hillary Kerr to find the hottest looks and trends of the season. In honor of the first week of fall, the WhoWhatWear.com team shares how Rightcliq by Visa helps them find, compare, share and purchase the top looks hitting the runway this season.

After watching the video, make sure to enroll at www.rightcliq.visa.com and create your own fall fashion bundle.

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Posted by: Paul Wilke, Visa Corporate Relations on September 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm

Category: Brand & Sponsorships, Technology & Innovation
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Sep 21, 2010

Have Phone, Will Travel

A journey of a thousand miles now begins with a single wave.

Visa today announced partnerships with transit agencies in New York and New Jersey that will give commuters the ability to bypass the ticket window and pay for their fare with a mobile phone. This pilot program—which includes New York City Transit, NJ TRANSIT, and The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey—enables riders of mass transit systems to pay using Visa payWave-enabled credit, debit and prepaid cards and mobile phones.

The mobile technology, which was developed by DeviceFidelity, transforms smart phones with a microSD slot into a Visa payment device. This announcement is a giant step toward Visa’s goal of eliminating the time-consuming step of paying for a ticket at a separate fare machine or searching for cash, reducing riders’ hassle during their commute.

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Posted by: Elvira Swanson, Visa Corporate Relations on September 21, 2010 at 7:17 pm

Category: Benefits of Digital Currency, Mobile
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Sep 17, 2010

Migration Watch: Plastic for Parking

Nothing can ruin your day like watching a meter maid place a ticket under your windshield wiper as you run towards your car with a fistful of change. Luckily, cities across the U.S. have realized the inconvenience of using coins to pay at parking meters and are starting to transition to payment card-accepting meters.

A new card-accepting meter in San Francisco's Hayes Valley neighborhood.

A new payment card-accepting meter in San Francisco's Hayes Valley neighborhood.

Just this week, the city of Madison, Wisconsin, unveiled new, card accepting meters for those who don’t have cash or coins and need to park downtown. According to Mary Carbine, Executive Director for Downtown Madison, Inc., “Now it’s going to be so much more convenient for the customer. You don’t have to carry a lot of change or worry if you have enough change. You can use a credit or debit card, which is how a lot of people pay for things these days.”

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Posted by: Liz Nunan, Visa Corporate Relations on September 17, 2010 at 5:01 pm

Category: Benefits of Digital Currency
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Sep 15, 2010

Visa Ranks #82 on Interbrand’s Best Global Brands List

For the third consecutive year, Visa was named to the Best Global Brands list compiled by consultancy Interbrand, which calculated Visa’s brand value to be more than $3.9 billion. Visa was one of the list’s biggest risers, coming in at #82 this year, a significant move of 12 spots on the list. In 2009, Visa ranked #94 and in 2008, the first year Visa was eligible for inclusion, we debuted at #100. Since our debut on the Best Global Brands list in 2008, we’ve also seen our brand value increase $660 million.

Best Global Brands is considered one of the most influential benchmark studies by business leaders. Click here to see the Top 100 ranking and here to see the full report.

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Posted by: Antonio Lucio, Chief Marketing Officer on September 15, 2010 at 6:15 pm

Category: About Visa, Brand & Sponsorships, Cross Border
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Sep 15, 2010

Update from Elizabeth Buse: Dispatch from the World Economic Forum

Greetings from the World Economic Forum in Tianjin, China!

This week’s conference was a fascinating and enriching experience for me, as I engaged with technology leaders, business partners, government officials, media and other influencers from around the world to highlight the benefits of digital currency for consumers, merchants, governments and economies worldwide.

Without question, the goals of the World Economic Forum and Visa are strongly aligned, as both organizations seek to promote social development and economic inclusion globally. In fact, on Monday, I participated in a panel discussion which specifically looked at the importance of aligning commercial and societal objectives when seeking to do business in emerging and “frontier” markets around the world.  In short, I made the point that we all need to seek to understand what governments are trying to do, assess the local situation and be prepared to adapt our business strategy accordingly. For those of you who are interested, a webcast of the panel discussion is available.

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Posted by: Elizabeth Buse, Visa Group President, Asia Pacific, Central Europe, Middle East & Africa on September 15, 2010 at 12:29 pm

Category: Corporate Responsibility, Cross Border, Products & Services, Technology & Innovation
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Sep 13, 2010

Drew Brees: Financial Football MVP

This week, we launched an updated version of Financial Football—our free, financial literacy video game. In all respects, this 2.0 version is better, stronger and faster than the original game we launched in 2005. The new game has more personal finance questions, better graphics, more game play options and a broader reach. The game also now has three distinct age options—a mode for middle schoolers, another for high school students and one for adults.

In addition to being playable online, this new game represents the first iPad and iPhone games Visa has produced. The HD iPad version is already in the top 10 on iTunes in the free educational games and sports games categories.

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Posted by: Jason Alderman, Visa Corporate Relations on September 13, 2010 at 4:54 pm

Category: Corporate Responsibility, Financial Literacy
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Sep 10, 2010

Visa “Watan” Cards Deliver Relief to Pakistan Flood Victims

You most likely saw our press release yesterday, announcing our partnership with United Bank Limited Pakistan (UBL) and local Pakistani agencies to help distribute relief funds to 2 million families affected by the floods. The Watan Visa prepaid debit card, funded by the Pakistan government, will be loaded each with Pkr20,000 (US$230) and issued by UBL in the coming weeks. (Learn more about a similar program we enacted with UBL in 2009. The government used these cards as a solution for helping 1.4 million displaced families receive financial assistance, after fleeing the North-West Frontier Province to escape the ethnic and religious warfare in the region.)

We are proud to provide our fast and secure electronic payment network and products as part of the Pakistan relief effort. I asked my colleague in Pakistan, Amer Pasha, for his first-hand overview of the recent events:

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Posted by: Richard Martin, Visa Corporate Relations on September 10, 2010 at 8:52 pm

Category: About Visa, Corporate Responsibility, Currency of Progress
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Sep 3, 2010

Migration Watch: Cashless Skies

Consumers have long used digital currency to book air travel, whether at the terminal, over the phone or online. So, it is not surprising that airlines around the world are migrating towards new ways to facilitate electronic payments in order to serve customers who expect to be able to pay for everything from tickets to peanuts with their Visa card. In fact, according to a new study cited on PaymentsNews.com, airline payment innovations now go beyond cashless cabins. The study found that:

  • 33% of airlines are accepting payments from mobile devices
  • 50% of airlines are able to accept payments via self-service kiosks

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Posted by: Liz Nunan, Visa Corporate Relations on September 3, 2010 at 12:41 pm

Category: Benefits of Digital Currency
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Sep 2, 2010

Minimizing Confusion Over Minimums

We here at Visa wanted to take the opportunity to clarify a few recent posts about U.S. merchants setting a minimum purchase requirement for using a credit card. For our part, we want to proactively offer Visa’s perspective on this issue to minimize any confusion, particularly since Visa did not allow this practice in the past.

The answer is actually rather simple: We’ve changed our rules to conform to U.S. federal law.

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Posted by: Ted Carr, Visa Corporate Relations on September 2, 2010 at 7:44 pm

Category: About Visa, Government Regulatory Issues & Interchange
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