Visa Reports Holiday Season Transaction Volumes

During the busiest hour on December 23, Visa processed an average of 6,363 transaction messages each second. That's a 14 percent increase over the average of 5,546 transaction messages per second Visa processed during the peak hour on December 24, 2004. Consider that Visa's payment network, VisaNet, can process more transactions over the course of a coffee break than all the stock exchanges of the world in an entire day.

The holiday shopping season is the busiest time for Visa's processing technology, and Visa engineers conduct annual simulations in the summer to "stress test" the system to ensure it will operate flawlessly - even at rates far above the projected peak for the coming season.

For each of the past 13 years, Visa has processed a steadily increasing transaction load - about 20 percent per year -- with 100 percent reliability, thanks to a continued investment in its industry-leading processing technology. In the past year, that has included completion of a five-year project to modernize the system, and the opening of a state-of-the-art, 70,000-square foot data center, the first new data center for Visa in 15 years. That investment has also included advanced fraud detection and prevention technology that has driven fraud rates on the Visa system to historic low rates - approximately six cents per $100.

"As consumers continue to choose to pay with Visa instead of cash or checks, our technology has to keep pace with the incredible demand and with expectations that every Visa transaction will be processed quickly, reliably and securely," said Keith Hunter, Executive Vice President of Global Processing Services at Inovant, Visa's IT subsidiary. "To exceed cardholder expectations, we've continued to invest in our systems and testing every year. As a result, Visa today operates the world's largest, most robust and most secure payment network, one that Visa cardholders trust, especially during the busiest shopping season."