Visa rewards mobile-savvy cardholders

Visa International Asia Pacific’s "Pocket-a-Million" promotion in the Philippines has proven to be a groundbreaking success. The contest entries were submitted via Short Messaging Service (SMS) on GSM mobile phones last April. Survey results have just been released, showing a 300 percent increase in response rate over Visa’s previous promotion.

Visa decided to move away from the traditional paper-based method of contest registration in favor of digital communication. This choice was based on the reported demographics of the country that Filipinos send some 4.5 billion messages per month – the highest propensity to send text messages by any culture.

With the knowledge that Visa cardholders in the Philippines were also very likely to be mobile phone subscribers, thus, the SMS method would be in synch with their lifestyle.

Virtual drop box

"SMS proved to be a most convenient way for Visa cardholders to submit their entries, typing in details of their transaction on their mobile phones and sending it to ‘virtual drop boxes’ which are really access codes provided by the carriers," said Jennifer Lee, Visa International’s marketing director for the Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia.

"We are delighted that with this new format, we engaged and involved even more of our cardholders in the promotion," she added.

June Seah, Visa’s senior country manager for Southeast Asia, said, "Across the region, Visa has spearheaded secure digital payment – via the Internet, personal digital assistants and mobile phones – to give our cardholders the same security and convenience in the virtual world which they now experience in the physical world. By going mobile in this promotion, we were able to reach out to our customers anytime and anywhere."

The Visa promotion went live over the networks of Globe Telecom and Smart Communications, which together currently account for some 15 percent of the global SMS volume.

True value added

"Pocket-a-Million" was one of the promotions in Visa’s aggressive brand advertising campaign which featured actress Liv Tyler. The contest winner’s Visa account was credited with P1 million (approximately S20,000).

The value-added SMS service was very well-received as the customers enjoyed the ease and speed at which they could join the contest, with the assurance that the networks were secure and reliable.

Visa tapped Manila-based wireless application developer Chikka Asia Inc. to build the promotion platform and test it over the networks of Globe and Smart.

Chikka is known for launching the world’s first mobile Instant Messenger in Manila, the "texting capital." Chikka boasts of being the only provider to clinch long-term revenue sharing contracts with the Philippines’ two dominant mobile carriers.

Visa is the world’s leading payment brand. Visa-branded cards generate more than $2 trillion in annual volume worldwide and are accepted in more than 24 million merchant locations around the world, including more than 750,000 automated teller machines.

Visa is a leader in Internet payment and electronic commerce, with more than 50 percent of electronic transactions being done with Visa cards.

In the Asia-Pacific, Visa has a greater market share than all other brands combined with more than 56 percent of retail sales volume. In 2001, a total of $480 billion was spent in the Asia-Pacific using Visa cards, a growth of 70 percent over the previous year. Visa Asia-Pacific’s Internet address is www.visa-asia.com.