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Visa Gets Smart

NEW YORK – Visa U.S.A., the world’s largest payment system, launched its “smart Visa” card, a new, futuristic payment card platform with multi-function capabilities powered by cutting edge chip technology. The smart Visa card enables Visa financial institutions to combine the purchasing power of traditional payment cards with smart chip technology to offer added security, utility and convenience to consumers.

With the growth in e-commerce, new and technologically-enhanced payment products such as the smart Visa card will meet the evolving needs of consumers for greater convenience, control and highly personalized services.

The introduction of smart Visa is part of a broad strategy designed to provide Visa issuers with both a brand platform and a technology platform to significantly increase marketing success while reducing time and cost to market.

“smart Visa” plays an important role in Visa’s ongoing programs to position Visa as the payment brand of choice. The brand platform consists of a distinctive brand identity system that can be leveraged by issuers on all Visa-flagged credit and deposit access products. An aggressive marketing-communications campaign will generate awareness and understanding of smart Visa while building a foundation for issuer marketing campaigns. The campaign will include national television and online advertising, content on Visa.com, and ongoing promotions.

Technology Platform

The technology platform provides Visa issuers with a number of pre-packaged applications that can be readily adapted to fit individual issuer strategies for smart cards. Working together, the identity and technology platforms should better enable Visa issuers to effectively compete in a rapidly changing marketplace.

This fall, Visa member financial institutions First USA, FleetBoston Financial Corp. and Providian Financial Corp. will implement smart Visa card programs with new chip technology. Visa also is in discussions with other financial institutions looking to incorporate the technology into their business strategies.

Because smart Visa cards use the Open Platform, Visa will be able to further collaborate with developers and member banks to offer innovative services that will work not only in the physical world, but also online, and ultimately with mobile phones, PCs, and personal digital assistants (PDAs).

Product Platform

The smart Visa card product platform will deliver technology now only available abroad or in select domestic programs in the form of a mainstream U.S. product offering to provide a combination of web-delivered added value, additional security, and online shopping enhancements such as form-fill capability.

Used in conjunction with a smart card reader connected to a PC, smart Visa cards have the ability to provide consumers with secure access to value-added content on Issuer web sites, to facilitate secure online payment, and ultimately, to enable cardholders to download enhancements to their cards via their PCs without ever having to get a new card.

Benefits of Smart Card Technology

As chip payment technology begins to emerge at physical merchant locations in the United States, smart Visa cardholders will enjoy benefits of smart card technology in traditional payment environments as well. Additionally, smart cards can also store information to add convenience to consumers’ everyday lives, such as the ability to function as electronic keys for a home, office or car.

“Over the past five years, the evolution of the Internet and impact of e-commerce has generated an increased demand in the U.S. for payment products offering enhanced technology and applications,” said Al Banisch, senior vice president of Consumer Credit Products, Visa U.S.A. “Consumers expect new technologies, with time and convenience being of the utmost importance. smart Visa delivers tremendous benefits to cardholders, providing greater security in tandem with financial information, more efficient online commerce, and highly personalized benefits and services to simplify their lives.”

Already popular in Europe, smart cards are gaining momentum in the U.S. Visa has led the chip market globally, as evidenced by the more than 23 million Visa-branded chip cards currently used worldwide. With the cost of chip technology decreasing and penetration of home computer usage on the rise, the potential for smart cards in the U.S. is becoming more of a reality, offering countless benefits for banks, for merchants and consumers.

The smart Visa program is another element in the effort to facilitate “universal commerce” merchants and consumers, involving all forms of payment technologies, including the Internet, mobile commerce and other emerging technologies.

www.visa.com

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