Visa Reports 18% Volume Boost for ’04 with Drop in Chargebacks

Visa USA reported yesterday its total dollar volume in 2004 reached $1.3 trillion, up 17.9% from the previous year. Total sales volume, or dollars on Visa products at the point of sale, hit $1.045 trillion, an increase of 19.1%, the San Francisco-based bank card network says. All Visa-branded cards in circulation in the U.S., meanwhile, came to 458 million at year's end, a 7% jump from 2003. Merchants, meanwhile, handled fewer chargebacks as a result of improvements in an automated dispute-handling system, Visa reports. The network's Reengineering Disputes (RED) initiative, introduced in 2002, has cut the rate of chargebacks 46% since 2001, Visa says, resulting in 5.9 million fewer chargebacks for merchants last year. The drop in disputed transactions has saved merchants $750 million in chargebacks over the past three years, the company says, while issuers have saved $300 million in operating expenses over the same period. RED relies on an electronic service called Visa Resolve Online, which merchants can use to help research and resolve chargebacked transactions. Consumer credit card volume for Visa USA was up 11% in 2004 to $517 billion, driven in part by increased penetration of what Visa calls new and emerging market segments, or merchant markets that have not historically accepted cards. Collectively, this market accounted for $152.7 billion of Visa volume last year, a 25.2% rise from 2003. The quick-service, or fast-food, segment of this market was the fastest-growing for Visa, climbing fully two-thirds over 2003 volume to $10.8 billion as several fast-food chains rolled out card acceptance. Bill payments jumped 24.7% to $69.9 billion, representing the largest of the new and emerging merchant markets. Debit card activity, including transactions for both the Visa check card and its Interlink PIN switch, grew 40% last year, accounting for fully 59% of all Visa transactions in the U.S. Signature-based, or check card, volume was $346 billion, a 19.7% increase. Visa prepaid card volume, including traffic on gift cards and on the Visa TravelMoney T&E card, rose 112%, Visa says.