Visa has announced the global launch of its Olympic-themed marketing campaign for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, Go World. According to Visa, "this global campaign, which features television, digital and out-of-home advertising, host market merchant activation programs and usage promotions, enables Visa to connect with cardholders and Olympic and Paralympic Games fans to drive preference for and usage of Visa products worldwide." READ MORE

Visa has announced that is has extended the global reach of its Visa Money Transfer Service to greater China and the United Arab Emirates, two of the world's most active territories for international remittance. Visa has also launched a new managed service, available initially in Canada and the U.S., that makes it easier for a financial institution to offer Visa Money Transfer to its customers. READ MORE

Western Union has launched a new Visa prepaid gift card and greeting card offering enabling consumers to send the gift of money using Western Union branded prepaid gift cards available at http://www.WesternUnion.com. READ MORE

Among many other topics on yesterday's earnings conference call, Visa Inc. CEO Joseph W. Saunders spoke briefly about a new ecommerce solution being developed by Visa. He said Right Click by Visa was "an online shopping tool targeted to consumers that assists online shoppers." Saunders went on to say that it "assists online shoppers by offering the ability to browse multiple merchants and select items consumers are interested in looking at in one central location, making comparison shopping easier."

Visa Inc. has announced financial results for the fiscal fourth quarter and full year of 2009 ending September 30. Visa's payments volume growth through June 30, 2009 was a negative 2% over the prior year at $687 billion. Total volume, on a nominal basis and inclusive of cash volume, was $1.1 trillion, a 3% decline over the prior year. Total cards carrying the Visa brands rose 5% worldwide over the prior year to over 1.7 billion. Total processed transactions, representing transactions processed by VisaNet for the three months ending September 30, 2009, totaled 10.5 billion, a 9% increase over the prior year. Visa also announced that its Board of Directors has authorized a $1 billion share repurchase plan.

A presentation on Visa's financial results is available online.

In an article titled "Credit card giants create debit havoc", Dana Flavelle and Rita Trichur write for the Toronto Star about small merchant reactions to the introduction of Visa and MasterCard debit products into Canada.

Visa Inc. yesterday announced that John Partridge has been named President of the company. Partridge was formerly Chief Operating Officer. According to Visa, "he will continue to report to Joseph W. Saunders, Chairman and CEO of Visa Inc., and will oversee all client, marketing and product functions globally, enabling Visa to more effectively and efficiently allocate resources among markets to enhance its service to clients and speed Visa's growth."

We recently had an email from a long-time Visa colleague of ours that brought back memories of some of the early work that Visa did on smart cards back in the late 1980's-early 1990's. The most famous of those was the Visa Super Smart Card.

Paul Steger runs a web site that collects lots of information about Visa (and Mondex) smart cards - for us that's like a trip down memory lane!

Visa Canada has published survey results finding that "Canadian consumers welcome more choice in the country's debit marketplace. The survey, commissioned by Visa Canada between June 26 and July 5, 2009, found that three out of four (74 per cent) respondents said they would be interested in a debit card that offers enhanced features and two out of three (66 per cent) believe that consumers should have more choice when it comes to direct debit payments in Canada." READ MORE

In an article titled "Visa Plasters D.C. with Ads as Debate Heats Up", Maria Aspan writes for the American Banker about Visa's new "reputation campaign" launched earlier this week in Washington, DC intended to "highlight the benefits of plastic over checks and cash."

Visa has announced new global industry best practices for data field encryption, also known as end-to-end encryption. According to Visa, "the best practices are designed to further the payment industry's efforts to develop a common, open standard while providing guidance to encryption vendors and early adopters. Data field encryption protects card information from the swipe to the acquirer processor with no need for the merchant to process or transmit card data in the "clear."" The best practices document is available for download. READ MORE

Visa has announced Visa IntelliLink Spend Management – calling it "a new global information tool that provides extensive reporting and expense management capabilities for organizations of all sizes on a single scalable platform." READ MORE

Lloyd Constantine's new book "Priceless: The Case that Brought Down the Visa/MasterCard Bank Cartel" will be in stock and shipping from Amazon.com later this week. The book is quite a read - hard to put down - and highly recommended for payments professionals. See Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson's comments on the book.

Visa has released its annual global Commercial Consumption Expenditure (CCE) index estimating that global commercial spending grew to $90.2 trillion in 2008. The annual Visa CCE report provides standardized tracking of business and government spending globally and is recognized as an industry benchmark for measuring commercial spending. READ MORE

Visa has released results of a new survey finding that "consumers believe retailers benefit far more from accepting credit and debit cards than they pay in costs." Visa said that the survey also found that consumers believe merchants see card cost acceptance as a part of doing business, much like paying for utilities such as electricity. READ MORE

Visa has filed an 8-K providing information about its US payments volume for July and August. According to Visa, "in August, U.S. aggregate payments volume growth was negative 1% versus the prior year period. This represents an improvement over the July period end of negative 2%. Further broken down, U.S. credit payments volume growth was negative 10% and debit payments volume growth was positive 7%. Compared to the July period end, U.S. credit payments volume was down slightly from negative 9%, while debit payments volume improved from positive 4%." READ MORE

Paul Tomasofsky writes this morning about our "Note on Check Cards" post late yesterday:

Today I noticed your short sardonic statement about Check Cards and Debit Cards. You make a great point that it seems the name is starting to shift around.

However, I must make a correction. The early days of Visa Check Cards were actually the early 1980’s and not the 1990’s.

I was a witness to these early days. In fact, in the spring of 1982 I served on a VISA Advisory Panel that actually met in Florida to discuss what to name this new product. We studied lots of VISA consumer research that showed how much consumers back then really hated the word “debit.” In the end, “Check Card” became the name.

In addition, in the fall of 1982, I led the team at the then First National Bank of Maryland that issued 150,000 VISA Check Cards to our DDA base."

Back in the early days of debit cards in the early 1990's, Visa pioneered the term Check Card for its debit card product.

More recently, it's been emphasizing Visa Debit as the product's name - transitioning away from the original Check Card branding.

Ironically, today's Wall St. Journal had a headline that read "Wal-Mart to Pay Via Check Cards". No, not via Visa Check Cards - but, rather, MasterCard Debit Cards.

Attorney Lloyd Constantine of Constantine Cannon has a new book coming out in early October titled "Priceless: The Case that Brought Down the Visa/MasterCard Bank Cartel".

From the advance material on the book:

Priceless offers readers an insider’s telling of the case that ended with the breakup of the Visa/Mastercard credit cartel and a $3.4 Billion settlement. Lloyd Constantine, founder of Constantine and Partners, the small boutique antitrust firm that could, and lead counsel on the Visa/Mastercard case, takes no prisoners as he tells his side of what happened in this very public lawsuit whose outcome continues to affect economics today."

Priceless is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com.

In an article titled "RBC to offer both Visa, MasterCard products", Scott DeVeau writes for the Financial Post that "Royal Bank of Canada announced its plans Wednesday to become the first major credit card issuer in the country to offer both Visa and MasterCard products."

The New Zealand Commerce Commission has announced it has "signed an agreement with the Visa International Service Association and Visa Worldwide Pte Limited (Visa) settling the Commission’s claims against Visa in relation to credit card interchange fees. The Commission’s proceedings allege that the rules of the Visa scheme providing for the payment of multilateral interchange fees, together with related rules, breached the restrictive trade practices provisions of the Commerce Act." READ MORE

U.S. Bank has announced that it is "the first card issuer in the United States to add Visa payWave technology to an unembossed debit card that is issued instantly to an account holder upon opening an account. The instant-issue Visa payWave pilot is being tested at select U.S. Bank branches in Denver and Salt Lake City as part of U.S. Bank’s on-going innovation in payments." READ MORE

In yesterday's Visa quarterly earnings call (from the transcript provided by SeekingAlpha.com), CEO Joe Saunders commented about plans for an "enhanced consumer platform" for online shoppers:

While we have a commanding 48% payment volume share on the net, our ultimate goal is for an ever-increasing number of consumers to recognize that the fastest, safest, and easiest way to transact online is with a Visa branded product.

To that end, among other upgrades, we are on the cusp of rolling out an enhanced consumer platform that will ultimately assist Internet shoppers in three ways. First, pre-purchase activities like a best price search capability; second, check-out activities like aliasing and auto form fill; and third, post-purchase capabilities like tracking and shipping.

Saunders said he'd "have more to say about this in the coming months."

In yesterday's Visa quarterly earnings call (from the transcript provided by SeekingAlpha.com), CEO Joe Saunders commented about the growth opportunities ahead in the prepaid market:

In the U.S., we believe this is a $1 trillion potential market while globally it could be as high as $3 trillion.

Stacked up against worldwide Visa payment volume for the 12 months through March of $2.7 trillion, it’s easy to see that even a nominal penetration of this market could be needle moving for us.

The largest opportunity globally is penetrating the under-banked segment with general purposed reloadable cards.

USA Technologies has announced the signing of an amendment to its existing agreement with Visa to expand the deployment of its ePort cashless payment solution for vending machines by another 2,500 terminals, for a total of up to 4,000 terminals, that are expected to be installed in markets nationwide. READ MORE

This afternoon Visa Inc. reported financial results for its fiscal third quarter 2009.

The company reported adjusted quarterly net income of $507 million (excluding the gain on the VisaNet do Brasil shares) on net operating revenue of $1.6 billion, an increase of 2% over the prior year. Visa's payments volume growth declined 5% over the prior year to $617 billion and total volume, on a nominal basis and inclusive of cash volume, was $969 billion, a 7% decline over the prior year. Total processed transactions, which represent transactions processed by VisaNet through June 30, 2009, totaled 10.3 billion, an 8% increase over the prior year.

Visa and U.S. Bank have announced Syncada – a joint venture that the two companies say "provides a business-to-business (B2B) network for corporations and governments to process and track invoices, make and receive payments around the world, and have payables or receivables financed through local and global financial institutions." As part of the joint venture, Visa said it has made a capital investment in Syncada. READ MORE

It's earnings season for the major card companies again. Later today at 5 PM Eastern, Visa will be announcing financial results for its fiscal Q3. Tomorrow morning, MasterCard will be announcing financial results before the market opens at 9 AM Eastern.

Visa has announced a reorganization of the company's executive management team's responsibilities "to heighten organizational effectiveness and increase the pace of Visa's global alignment."

As part of the changes, John C. (Hans) Morris will step down as President - although he will remain with the company in a transition role through year-end. "Hans played an important role as we created Visa Inc., executed the IPO and transitioned Visa to a high performing public company," said Joseph W. (Joe) Saunders, Chairman and CEO of Visa. "We've benefitted from his energy, insight and counsel."

Visa's global sales, client service, marketing, product development and innovation functions will be consolidated, effective immediately, under John M. Partridge, Chief Operating Officer. READ MORE

In an article titled "Put It on MasterCard", Bill Alpert writes for Barron's about MasterCard's prospects - comparing it to Visa and writing that "a swelling chorus on Wall Street says MasterCard is underrated and may be the better play in an economic recovery."

Alpert notes that MasterCard isn't participating in the growth of debit cards to the extent that Visa has - but says it is emphasizing innovation to try to gain share in debit.

He concludes by noting that pending litigation about interchange fees could, depending upon how court decisions play out, affect both companies - and noting that Visa has set aside some funds to cover any potential liability from the litigation while MasterCard hasn't.