Visa USA Reports Transactions Rose Nearly 12% in 2003

Visa USA reported today that its cards produced 16.1 billion transactions last year, an increase of 11.7% over its transaction volume in 2002. Although credit cards accounted for $650 billion in volume in 2003, or 59% of Visa's total dollar volume, signature-secured debit cards made up 59% of the bank card company's transactions, up from 8% 10 years ago. Interlink transactions, which are secured by personal identification numbers, added another 1 billion debit transactions last year, Visa reported, up 32%. Considering both signature-based and PIN-based debit traffic, consumer credit card transactions now account for around one-third of Visa's U.S. transaction total. At the same time, Visa's gift card program last year reached $1 billion in volume, largely because of holiday spending and the company's emphasis on payroll cards. The company's goal is to reach $50 billion in volume in this category in five years. In the fast-food merchant segment, one of the hottest markets in electronic payments, Visa reported a 105% increase in dollar volume, to $6.5 billion, or about 5% of all fast-food purchases. And Internet transactions jumped 44.5% last year to more than 722 million. Dollar volume in this channel reached $60.4 billion, including debit and credit card payments, an increase of 53.2% over 2002. Visa's transaction total in 2003 gives the company a 28% share of what Digital Transactions News estimates to be a total domestic market of 58 billion electronic transactions.