Visa projects 67% hike in sales this year

Visa International is optimistic credit card sales will continue to be strong, buoyed by a resurgence of debit cards.

In 2005, debit card sales in the Philippines reached P104 billion, up 67 percent from the previous year’s level.

Visa Philippines country manager James Dixon said they expect sales this year to grow at practically the same rate.

"Growth was strong last year, and we see it growing strong again this year," Dixon said during the formal launching of its new advertising campaign recently.

He said the biggest challenge is convincing Filipinos to migrate from cash and checks to credit and debit cards.

"Filipinos will be spending more, and Filipinos should be spending differently."

Retail sales volume reached P1.5 billion while transactions through debit cards ballooned to 35 million from the Visa cards in the Philippines which topped 5.6 million.

Visa is supported in the Philippines by four issuing banks, namely the Equitable PCI Bank, Standard Chartered Bank Philippines, Union Banking Corp., and Chinatrust Commercial Bank Philippines Inc.

There are 69,000 merchants honoring Visa International cards, which has resulted in a 27-percent increase in point-of-sales (POS) as well as Internet transactions.

Dixon said debit cards could also be used for remittances sent by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) from their country of employment. That will allow, among others, the opportunity for the returning or vacationing migrant Filipino to personally make the purchases.

At the start of 2006, a total of 627 million debit cards were issued globally. Seventy million were issued across 24 different markets in the Asia Pacific region resulting on a total card sales volume of $115 billion.