Visa 2007 Annual Report Download - page 22

Table of Contents
We also provide marketing support to our customers through our support of Visa co-branded and affinity card programs. Co-branded cards are payment
cards bearing the brand marks of an issuer and a marketing partner, usually a merchant, while affinity cards generally bear the marks or logos of charitable,
professional, educational or civic organizations.
Our merchant marketing activities bring added value to our merchant partners through the development of marketing programs customized for specific
merchants and industry segments. These programs, which we develop in conjunction with merchants, generate awareness for new acceptance channels and
locations and increase cardholder spending and merchant sales revenue through special offers and promotions.
Merchant Acceptance Initiatives
Merchants play a vital role in our payments network, and we work continuously to build our merchant acceptance and enhance our relationships with
merchants that accept Visa-branded cards. At June 30, 2007, our customers reported that our cards were accepted at more than 28 million merchant outlets
around the world.
We aim to maintain and expand our merchant base by focusing on the needs of merchants and consumers and enhancing our programs to increase
acceptance in attractive and fast-growing segments, such as bill payment. Our efforts to address these needs include supporting the development of
technological innovations, delivering value-added information services, such as the Visa Incentive Network, and evaluating potential modifications to our
operating rules and interchange rates to enhance the value of our payments network compared to other forms of payment. In the United States, for example,
the Visa Small Ticket Payment Service provides a special interchange rate category and No Signature Required programs eliminate the requirement for a
cardholder signature for certain small-value transactions in a number of everyday spend categories, including quick-service restaurants, movie theatres and
public transit. Under this program, the merchant will be protected against no signature chargebacks. We believe these initiatives have resulted in a faster
check-out process, a reduction in merchants' operating expenses, increased merchant acceptance and greater transaction volume in these categories.
We enter into arrangements with certain merchants under which they receive monetary incentives and rebates for acceptance of products carrying our
brands and increasing their payments volume of products carrying our brands or indicating a preference for our cards.
We continue to respond to the needs of merchants in order to enhance the efficiency of the Visa payments network for the benefit of all network
participants. For example, in 2006, we enabled merchants in the United States to obtain copies of key provisions of our U.S. operating regulations, thereby
increasing access to the rules and procedures that govern merchant participation in our system. We also published our U.S. interchange rate schedule and
made our U.S. interchange rate qualification guide available to merchants in an effort to educate merchants about the structure of our customer interchange
rates and the criteria that determine the specific rate for which a given transaction qualifies.
Customer Standards
Our financial institution customers participate in the Visa payments network through one of two ways. Financial institution customers that were
members of either Visa U.S.A. or Visa International prior to the closing of our reorganization have remained members of those two entities, which continue to
operate as non-stock subsidiaries of Visa Inc. Those financial institutions have non-equity membership interests in the applicable subsidiary, which represent
the commercial and other rights and obligations with regard to participation in the Visa payments system. Our financial institution customers that were
members of Visa Canada prior to the closing of our reorganization have entered into a series of agreements, which govern their commercial rights and
obligations with respect to the Visa payments system.
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