Philippine VISA country manager James Dixon expects their volume of cardholders — both credit and debit, will grow 30 percent in the next twelve months.
During a press briefing, Dizon said VISA competes in cash and check products.
"(The Philippines) is very much a cash market, about 95 percent of the market are cash and check payments." Total transactions of VISA card amounted to $2.7 billion as of June.
"In the next 12 months we expect a growth in excess of 12 percent (in point -of-sale transactions) we believe that the economy continues to improve and we’re hopeful that it will. Anything that helps the GDP also helps our market and we’re hoping for a stable economy," Dixon told reporters.
As of June, VISA processed 62 million transactions in the Philippines. It has over 60,000 merchant outlets here.
Dixon said most of the VISA volume is credit card. "But what’s driving the growth into the future is debit card, which is a card that allows you to access your own checking and savings account, as well as prepaid. This market is very familiar with prepaid."
To date VISA has over 7.5 million cards in the region, of which just over 5 million are debit and prepaid while 2.3 million are credit cards. "So we have a large and growing debit and prepaid business," said Dixon.
In the Philippines VISA has eleven principal issuers/members. "This market is already a developed card market with a lot of upside, by developed I mean we have sophisticated payments," the company official said.
Dixon explained further that their card growth is not because Filipinos are spending more but are spending differently. "What we’re trying to do is take what the people are spending in cash and check and put those in plastic or electronic payment."
He added that the use of credit to facilitate consumer spending is good for GDP since it allows people to time their payments appropriately. "It is good for the consumer, good for the merchants and at the macro-level certainly it is good for the economy."
With 7.5 million VISA credit, debit and prepaid cards in the global market, the company’s point of sale plus cash grew 55 percent during the twelve months ending June 30. Point-of-sale volume grew 23 percent during same period. (LCC)
Of the $2.7B total VISA transactions, $1.2 billion was point-of-sale usage. (LCC)
