The Flexible Way to Meet Your Customers’ Needs

Rated best overall card,¹ Visa remains a global leader in payment systems and one of the most recognized brand marks worldwide. To ensure this continued success, we adapt to market conditions and customer needs. Consequently, Visa has consolidated its popular Visa Classic, Visa Gold, and Visa Platinum products. Now you have the flexibility to develop customized credit products based on individual cardholder needs—rather than by strictly defined requirements—so you can compete more effectively and potentially increase cardholder usage. Simply pick and choose among the many desirable programs and enhancements Visa supports.

Visa’s flexible program helps you:

• Reduce administrative costs.
• Eliminate hurdles for issuing Visa cards.
• Simplify day-to-day reporting and operations.

Benefits of the Visa Traditional product.

Visa Traditional offers your financial institution:

• Increased flexibility to create credit card products that meet your cardholders’ needs.
• The option to continue marketing Visa Classic, Visa Gold, and Visa Platinum products.
• Professionally managed enhancements that are optional.
• Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver funded by Visa.
• Operational savings from reduced tracking and reporting requirements.
• Simplified upgrade opportunities.
• Simplified disclosure requirements.

Visa Traditional Rewards helps give you a competitive advantage. Rewards Card Ownership and Usage

Currently, rewards are offered on 50 percent of all new card solicitations, and mainstream rewards programs (non-airline/hotel co-branding programs) generate Rewards Card Ownership 30 percent more spend on average than non-rewards credit cards.2 Responding both (4Q02–3Q03) to this proliferation of rewards-based consumer credit products and to Issuer input, Visa has established the Visa Traditional Rewards product platform. This mainstream credit rewards product platform allows you to differentiate your Visa Traditional card products from other payment card brands by including a rewards product such as Visa Extras. This will help give you an advantage by enabling you to compete more effectively for loyalty-driven customers through the development of unique and customized Visa consumer credit card products. Visa Traditional Rewards provides a baseline for programs targeting the mainstream rewards segment.

Visa will help you maximize this opportunity by:

• Requiring all programs to be registered and approved by Visa;
• Establishing minimum rewards-value requirements and thresholds to ensure consistency, while still offering you the ability to differentiate and enhance value;
• Creating additional merchant value through the introduction of a new merchant marketing program, which may include special offers to Visa Traditional Rewards and Visa Signature cardholders;
• Ensuring all credit operational rules and regulations apply to merchants participating in the new merchant marketing program, and enhancing fraud-fighting programs like Card Verification Value 2 (CVV2) and Address Verification Service (AVS);
• Establishing an Interchange Reimbursement Fee structure consistent with the value proposition of the new platform for consumers, Members, and merchants;
• Providing the Visa Extras product with which you can create loyalty programs tailored to your cardholders’ needs.

To learn more about how to qualify your Visa Traditional product within the Visa Traditional Rewards product platform, including using Visa Extras to accomplish this, please obtain the Visa Traditional Rewards Product Platform Registration Toolkit (V11313-10-04-TRTKT) at us.visaonline.com.

A wealth of marketing opportunities.

From offering your Visa cardholders incentives and rewards, to encouraging activation and usage, the following suggestions and resources can help you market your Visa cards:

• Use Visa marketing tools and best practices to help increase cardholder activation, usage, and retention efforts. For details, order the Visa Consumer Credit Card Marketing Strategies and Programs CD-ROM (V13081-02-04c) at us.visaonline.com.
• The Visa Consumer Credit Card Marketing Solutions: Tools and Tactics brochure (V13084-02-04) provides materials designed to capture cardholders’ attention. Two CD-ROMs provide a variety of materials to support your activation, usage, and retention efforts. To order, go to us.visaonline.com.
• Align your institution with some of the world’s most popular entertainment properties—such as Disney, the Olympic Games, Live Broadway, the NFL™, the Visa Triple Crown, and NASCAR®—to help increase card usage, generate higher revenue, and strengthen customer relationships and loyalty. Visit us.visaonline.com for details and descriptions of current and upcoming Visa promotions and available marketing materials.

Differentiating your card products.

Visa’s flexible approach allows you to redefine and refine the role of Visa Classic, Visa Gold, and Visa Platinum in card issuing and retention strategies. The following suggestions can help differentiate your card products:

• Consider building a bundle of benefits targeted at specific market segments. For example, you could offer a card targeted to frequent travelers that includes enhancements such as Travel Accident Insurance and Lost Luggage Reimbursement.
• Direct your efforts to a feature like Purchase Security or Personal Identity Theft Coverage to attract and retain key cardholder segments that do not demonstrate spending in travel-related categories.
• Offer a wide range of enhancements for cardholders who exhibit the highest revenue potential, and use new messaging to educate them about existing card features.

For More Information

For more information, please call your Visa Account Executive or Contact Us.