Visa Viewpoints | Australia

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May 21, 2013

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ENCOURAGING POSITIVE FINANCIAL BEHAVIOUR

Today we announced a partnership with Rock the Schools, the largest and most successful free entertainment and music education program for high school students. Now in its eighth year, the hugely popular tour travels nationally through regional and metropolitan high schools over a three month period, providing an opportunity for us to work directly with students to improve their financial literacy.

A day at Rock the Schools consists of four targeted music education workshops and a live performance, held at lunchtime for the whole school, from a popular up-and-coming Australian band. This year’s touring bands include – Sheppard, Nine Sons of Dan, The Elliots and Bad Pony. Money management is a vital life skill and through this program we can provide students with the relevant tools and understanding to help them effectively manage their money.

Music is a great platform to make financial literacy more engaging. For example, we’re encouraging students to think through all aspects of a career in the music industry, which includes saving for their first guitar or EP recording and understanding the role of budgeting in putting on a music tour.

Rock the Schools is an educational program trusted by students, parents and teachers and it’s endorsed by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) and patroned by Minister Peter Garrett.

The program reaches over 80,000 12-18 year old Australian teens. We’re excited to be partnering with Rock the Schools to increase the financial literacy of Australian teenagers.

This year Visa is also teaming up with Money Smart Week, a national initiative promoting the importance of financial literacy. It runs from September 1 – 7.

 

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Posted by: Vipin Kalra, Visa Country Manager, Australia on May 21, 2013 at 5:38 pm

Category: Brand & Sponsorships, Corporate Responsiblity, Financial Literacy
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May 16, 2013

DO YOU STAY SMART ONLINE?

 

Guest Blogger Richard Windeyer, from the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, discusses online security in Australia and the launch of National Cyber Security Awareness Week.

Access to the internet is becoming easier, more immediate and very mobile in today’s interconnected world.

The internet is our gateway to a range of services including mobile banking and online payments, and we’re using a wider range of devices to manage these transactions, including tablets and smart phones.

Yet as we grow more comfortable with transacting online, we should also be aware of the risks and learn how to protect our personal and financial information.  We can’t become complacent about protecting ourselves online.

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Posted by: Visa Corporate Relations Team on May 16, 2013 at 11:56 am

Category: Digital Economy, Partnerships
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May 15, 2013

VISA AT CARDS & PAYMENTS

This week at the annual Cards & Payments-Retail World conference in Melbourne there was much discussion about mobile payments, the growth in eCommerce and what it means for consumers, banks and retailers.

Visa’s Country Manager Vipin Kalra participated in a panel discussion on the Future of Payments with Marj Demmer from ANZ, Mike Cook from Wal-Mart and Russell Zimmerman from the Australian Retailers Association. Vipin highlighted three trends in the industry – the change in form factor from plastic to mobile, the change from storing account information on the magstripe to the cloud to facilitate anywhere, any time payments, and the evolution of the payment experience to increasingly focus on adding value before and after the transaction.

Visa’s Head of V.me, Greg Storey, presented on digital wallet trends and the need for online payments to be fast and frictionless enough to enable consumers to make online purchases without interrupting their gaming experience. Country Risk Director Ian McKindley discussed the impact of mobile, online and emerging technology payments on security and fraud.

Delegates were able to try out mobile Visa payWave in the Store of the Future and visit the Visa Better Value and CyberSource displays. 

Watch the video for a snapshot of Visa at the event:

 

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Posted by: Judy Shaw, Corporate Relations on May 15, 2013 at 5:42 pm

Category: Benefits of Digital Currency, Technology & Innovation
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May 6, 2013

SUPPORTING STARLIGHT

This year the Starlight Foundation celebrates 25 years since it first began brightening the lives of seriously ill children and their families across Australia.

Last Friday, Visa employees in Sydney and Melbourne were proud to hit the streets to help celebrate Starlight Day, selling merchandise and participating in a corporate team challenge.  These activities are part of our ongoing partnership with the Starlight Foundation, which includes supporting Starlight through charitable giving, staff volunteering and events such as the Tour de Kids, Starlight’s annual fundraising bike ride, held earlier this year in April.

Team Visa hit the streets of Sydney on Starlight Day

Starlight Day aims to raise $1.5 million through events, community and corporate support and donations.  While this amount may seem like a tall order, the World Giving Index  found that Australia is the most generous country in the world, and we’re also happier for it. Happy nations are more likely to give than wealthy nations, as according to the index the connection between the giving of money and happiness is stronger than the link between the giving of money and the GDP of a nation.

The Starlight foundation fund raises year round, so find out how you can donate to the cause or support a Starlight event.

Taking part in the Starlight Nerf Corporate Challenge

 

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Posted by: Vipin Kalra, Visa Country Manager, Australia on May 6, 2013 at 5:31 pm

Category: Corporate Responsiblity, Partnerships
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Apr 18, 2013

CONTACTLESS PAYMENTS TAKE OFF AT COLES

Supermarket group Coles reports that over half of all its credit card transactions are now made using contactless payments. This is a remarkable feat given the supermarket group services 18 million customers per week and this has been achieved in just over six months since the roll out of contactless technology.

In this video, Richard Wormald, General Manager Strategy & Financial Services at Coles, explains that contactless payments are contributing to reduced waiting times for customers and 15 per cent faster checkouts. Additionally for Coles team members, time saved at the checkout allows for more time to be spent helping customers. It’s a win on both sides of the scanner.

Now that contactless acceptance has been embedded across its stores, Coles has laid the foundation for mobile payments and is now working to combine offers to loyalty cardholders on their mobile phone together with payment.

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Posted by: Visa Corporate Relations Team on April 18, 2013 at 10:38 am

Category: Cashless Society, Consumer Markets, Digital Economy, Technology & Innovation, Uncategorized
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Mar 7, 2013

IT’S TIME TO BREAK UP WITH CASH

 

Keeping track of cash can be a hassle, especially with today’s busy – and increasingly globe-trotting – lifestyle. The results from the Visa Payment Attitudes Study show that Australians lose an average of A$354 (US$361) every year because of cash left forgotten in the house or car, or unused foreign currency from a holiday or business trip.

The cost of this lost small change to the average Australian is approximately a dollar a day. While in a week that amounts to a couple of morning coffees, over a lifetime the figure reaches into tens of thousands of dollars.

 

 

The Visa Payment Attitudes Study reveals that switching from cash to cards can make a world of difference. So how can you get out of the cash trap?

  • Keep it secure. The foolproof way to make sure your money is safe is to keep it in your bank account and access it only when you need to with a debit card. You can also be assured that your money is safe when you purchase online – legitimate businesses will have secure sites and work with banks and payment companies to offer an extra layer of protection. Identity authentication services such as Verified by Visa require a password before purchases can be made.
  • Convenience is king. There is nothing worse than going to make a payment and realising you do not have enough cash on you. Debit cards however are widely accepted locally, abroad and online, so you can buy your groceries, make bill payments over the phone and make purchases online at your convenience.
  • Mind your money. The key to spending within your means is to know what your expenses are and to spend less than you make. Create a realistic budget – whether daily, weekly or monthly – whatever works for you.
  • Plastic – the global currency. Australians bring back an average A$298 (US$304) in unused foreign currency from their holidays and business trips each year. One in five of us will give this spare currency away or just forget about it. An easy alternative is opting to use your debit card, which is widely accepted and allows you to withdraw cash from ATMs overseas as you need it, rather than taking over a large lump sum in foreign currency.

See the Visa Payment Attitudes Study infographic  for a breakdown of the study’s results and which countries are losing out the most by sticking to cash.

 

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Posted by: Judy Shaw, Corporate Relations on March 7, 2013 at 11:18 am

Category: Benefits of Digital Currency, Digital Economy
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Mar 1, 2013

KEEPING YOUR TRANSACTIONS SECURE: VISA’S OPERATIONS CENTER EAST

 

 

Unless you work in the industry you probably haven’t given a second thought to what happens in the seconds between swiping, dipping or waving your Visa card and seeing the word “accepted” appear on the terminal in front of you.

And that’s fine.

When I turn on a tap at my home in Sydney I expect water to come out. I don’t know exactly how it works but I’ve never really had the need to question it. Such is the convenience and reliability I’ve become accustomed to.

The same goes for electronic payments. This month however I was fortunate enough to get a behind the scenes view of how it really works,  hosting a few Australian media on a visit to Visa’s Operations Center East (OCE) – one of the homes to our processing network VisaNet.

Our tour took us through the Network Operations Center (NOC), where a wall of screens shows a real time feed of transactions being processed, a world map shows the status of other Visa data centers around the globe, and another shows up to the second news and weather. There is also a team of people monitoring transactions and communicating with banks from around the world, alerting them to any irregularities.

 

 

We walked down the main corridor through the data center (about the length of three football fields) which links seven “pods”, each 20,000 square feet in size. The pods house Visa’s core payment processing systems and applications – the heart of VisaNet – with only one pod being required to run VisaNet.

As we stood in this room it was surreal to think of every transaction that was passing through there at that moment. Not to mention the number of my own transactions that have, and in future will, pass through here.

The next few rooms on our tour really demonstrated how self-sufficient the site is.

Each pod is supported by multiple power and cooling systems to ensure the data center continues processing Visa transactions even during a severe winter storm, hurricane or earthquake.

Four conduits bring electricity into the data center – if one is taken out, VisaNet will keep running. Diesel generators provide power in the event of utility power loss and enough diesel is kept on site to keep the center running for 10 days, and it will keep running as long as diesel can be brought on site.

The generators produce enough electricity to power a town of 25,000 households!

The facility has its own water well to provide cooling for the data center in the event of an emergency.

There’s also enough food and drink for the staff to keep them going for three months – should that be required.

Here are a couple more stats about VisaNet that really are quite phenomenal:

  • Every day, VisaNet connects up to 2 billion Visa accounts, millions of acceptance locations, 2 million ATMs and more than 15,000 financial institutions around the world.
  • On average more than 150 million transactions are processed and authorised in 175 currencies every day.
  • During peak times VisaNet is dealing with more than 10,000 transaction messages per second, while  stress testing of the network (an annual task) shows it has the capacity to handle in excess of 20,000 per second.
  • Every transaction is viewed in real-time with fraud scoring and multiple layers of security to help keep cardholders safe.
  • Transaction data is transformed into business intelligence to allow businesses to optimise processes; banks and merchants to offer personalised cardholder rewards; and governments and businesses to better manage expenditures.

After we left the OCE, I bought a coffee in the airport before our return flight. I watched people swiping their cards and taking their coffees with nonchalance. As I swiped my card and walked away I couldn’t help but think that VisaNet took that transaction from the coffee shop in the US, into that very room I was standing in only hours before, to my bank in Australia, and back again, for the retailer to approve it. And all in under two seconds.

Not bad.

 

Click here to view the story from A Current Affair following our visit to Visa’s OCE.

 

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Posted by: Andrew Craig, Corporate Relations Manager, Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific on March 1, 2013 at 2:47 pm

Category: Digital Economy, Financial Literacy
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Feb 19, 2013

AUSTRALIANS MADE 16.1 MILLION CARD TRANSACTIONS EVERYDAY IN 2012


Guest blogger Mike Ebstein, from MWE Consulting, analyses changes in the payments card market

Last week, the RBA released the 2012 credit and debit data for December and this encouraged me to take a look at what have been some of the more important and interesting patterns relating to how we pay.

The RBA has already provided broad indicators about how Australians pay with the 2010 Consumer Payments Use Study confirming the significant inroads made by cards. Cash continued to account for the majority of purchase transactions but debit and credit cards were used for more than half the value of non-cash transactions.

So Australians don’t really need an introduction to the benefits of card payments. In December 2012, there were 14.0 million personal credit and 1.2 million charge and commercial accounts. These 15.2 million accounts would have generated around 20 million plastics and these don’t include other payment cards such as prepaid gift, travel and commercial cards.  This high penetration of card ownership and use does not translate to fixed modes of behaviour. In fact, there have been some fundamental changes to the cards arena in recent years.

We need to place the cards market in context of its place in the economy. In 2012, credit, debit and charge cards were used to make $422.9 billion in purchases and $176.1 billion in cash advances and withdrawals. There were 4.78 billion purchase transactions and 1.12 cash transactions to make a total of 5.9 billion card transactions in the year. This means an average of over 16.1 million card transactions every day in 2012.

Some substantial changes are occurring. In 2003, the increase in account numbers was similar with 465,000 additional debit and 503,000 more credit and charge. Last year, debit grew by 2.3 million accounts whereas credit and charge increased by 210,000.

In 2003, debit accounted for 30 percent of the value of purchases made with a card. In 2012, that had increased to 40.7 percent. This does not mean that credit has missed out as the use of cards has broadened to make inroads into markets that were not available or underdeveloped a decade ago. And cash is no longer king of the payments chain.

ATMs provide a good barometer to how much cash we use. In 2002, the value of cash through ATMs was $113.9 billion, meaning an average of $399 per debit card account per month. That increased to $144.9 billion in 2008 at an average of $447 per account per month. In 2012, the total was just a little higher at $149.4 billion with an average down to $356 per account per month.  In fact, the 2012 ATM value of $151.5 billion is below the level of $151.5 billion reached in 2008.

Another major change is how cardholders are managing credit card balances. In 2012, the annual rate of growth in balances was just 1.2 percent. This is not only well below the rate of growth in card spend but the lowest on record. Australians have not stopped using their credit cards but they have become much more disciplined in managing their outstanding balances. The fact that the rate at which card payments has constantly exceeded card spend illustrates that card use has continued but with a more diligent approach to containing the card balance.

 

Mark Ebstein is Director at MWE Consulting, a specialist service provider in card payment products and associated reward and loyalty schemes. 

 

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Posted by: Visa Corporate Relations Team on February 19, 2013 at 12:06 pm

Category: Consumer Markets, Digital Economy
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Feb 11, 2013

ELECTRONIC PAYMENTS SHOWN TO STIMULATE THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY BY AU$20 BILLION

Today we released results of a global study conducted by leading economic forecast provider Moody’s Analytics that suggests debit and credit card usage boosted Australia’s GDP by nearly US$21 billion between 2008 and 2012.

The study of 56 countries that represent 93% of global GDP indicates the impact was an impressive US$983 billion increase in GDP worldwide.  This growth is equivalent to creating 1.9 million jobs and demonstrates that card usage makes the economy more efficient, yielding a meaningful boost to economic growth.

Consider that between 2008 and 2012, real GDP grew globally by 1.8% per annum, yet without increased card usage, that growth would have been 1.6%.

This increase in card usage can be attributed to the consumer benefits of using electronic payments, including the convenience of operating without cash or cheques, increased efficiency at checkout and enhanced security.

Still we have a great deal more to accomplish – data from Euromonitor data (i) reveals that more than 24% of all transactions in Australia in 2012 were in cash, and according to World Bank data (ii), 21% of Australians do not have a debit card and 36% do not have a credit card at a formal financial institution.

Imagine the economic benefit if we connected more Australians to electronic payments, giving them secure and immediate access to all of their financial resources – funds on deposit or a line of credit.

Additional highlights from the Moody’s Analytics study include:

  • Australia Economic Growth: Card usage in Australia rose from 50% in 2008 to 58% in 2012 increasing GDP by 0.47 percent, adding US$21 billion to the Australian economy.
  • Across Asia Pacific:  In China, GDP rose by nearly US$375 billion. In Japan, it rose by US$25 billion. In Thailand, increased card usage contributed US$2 billion. Additionally, China saw dramatic increases in card usage, from 31% in 2008 to an estimated 56% in 2012.
  • U.S. Economic Growth: Card usage in the U.S. increased GDP by 0.3 percent, adding $127 billion to the U.S. economy.
  • Global Economic Growth:  In some countries, card usage increased consumption significantly – at the top of that list: China by 4.89%; Chile by 1.28%; and Brazil by 1.15%.
  • Emerging Markets Growth:  Emerging markets recorded the greatest increases in GDP, averaging an added 0.8% – a figure more than double that of developed markets (0.3%).
  • Value of Electronic Payments:The study concluded that increased credit and debit card usage contributes to economic activity by reducing transaction costs and improving efficiency in the flow of goods and services.
    • Consumers: The advent of credit and debit cards has greatly aided consumers’ ability to optimize consumption decisions by giving them secure and immediate access to all of their funds on deposit or a line of credit. 
    • Merchants: Merchants also benefit because there is less cash and check handling in the system, eliminating the burdens and risks associated with holding cash.
    • Government: For governments, electronic payments lead to an increase in transparency and a reduction in the grey economy.

The dramatic growth of ecommerce and mobile payments will continue to grease the economic engine, bringing about more transactions and boosting spending.

As I laid out our plans for 2013 in a previous post, we have considerable momentum to build on in Australia and we look forward to accelerating the shift to electronic payments.

For more details, check out the full study that highlights the survey results.

 

i Euromonitor, January 2012

ii Financial Inclusion Data, World Bank, 2011

 

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Posted by: Vipin Kalra, Visa Country Manager, Australia on February 11, 2013 at 2:52 pm

Category: Benefits of Digital Currency, Consumer Markets
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Dec 14, 2012

YEAR-END REFLECTIONS AND WHAT’S AHEAD FOR 2013

2012 has been an exciting year for the payments industry and for us here at Visa. When I look back on our objectives to make payments easier, faster and simpler for consumers, we really have taken some big strides forward.

At the beginning of the year I remember saying Australia was at the tipping point for the widespread adoption of contactless payments. Now I’m pleased to report that consumers around Australia are paying for goods with a wave of their Visa payWave cards at some of Australia’s biggest retailers, including our two largest supermarkets Coles and Woolworths.  At McDonald’s, Visa payWave transactions now account for nearly 20 percent of all Visa transactions at their Australian stores.

Visa payWave is proving to be a trusted and popular payment option for Australians as we continue to see double digit month-on-month growth in the number of Visa payWave transactions being made. That’s remarkable progress.

We also made significant strides bringing the convenience of Visa point-of-sale payments to the eCommerce, mobile and social environments. In November, through our global partnership with Vodafone, we reached our first milestone in developing the world’s largest mobile payments application – Vodafone SmartPass – a solution that uses Near Field Communication and Visa payWave technology to allow consumers to make simple, every day purchases easily and securely with their smartphone.

We’ve also been actively engaged with the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Australian government on a few key regulatory matters that will shape the industry not least of which is the issue of surcharging. The Reserve Bank of Australia has announced that card schemes will now be able to put new rules in place to stop retailers from passing on excessive surcharges to consumers effective from 18 March. While we are concerned that the changes have not gone far enough, we remain fully committed to working with the RBA to bring down the current high levels of surcharging.

2012 also saw a shift in payment trends, with the gap between debit and credit closing in share of value of purchases. Based on current indications, Mike Ebstein of MWE Consulting believes debit will overtake personal credit in share of value of purchases around the end of 2013, reflecting a maturing of the market.

What will 2013 bring?

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Posted by: Vipin Kalra, Visa Country Manager, Australia on December 14, 2012 at 11:00 am

Category: Cashless Society, Mobile, Partnerships, Surcharging, Technology & Innovation
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