Visa 2011 Annual Report Download - page 17

Table of Contents
Visa, Interlink, PLUS, Visa Electron, the "Winged V" design, the "Dove" design and the "Bands Design-Blue, White & Gold." We also own numerous other
valuable trademarks and designs covering various brands, products, programs and services. Through agreements with our clients, we authorize and monitor
the use of our trademarks in connection with their participation in our payments network.
Competition
We compete in the global payment marketplace against all forms of payment, including paper-based forms, principally cash and checks; card-based
payments, including credit, charge, debit, ATM, prepaid, private-label and other types of general purpose and limited-use cards; and other electronic
payments, including wire transfers, electronic benefits transfers, automatic clearing house, or ACH, payments and electronic data interchange.
Within the general purpose payment card industry, we face substantial and intense competition worldwide in the provision of payments services to
financial institution clients and their cardholder merchants. The leading global card brands in the general purpose payment card industry are Visa,
MasterCard, American Express and Diners Club. Other general-purpose card brands are more concentrated in specific geographic regions, such as JCB in
Japan and Discover in the United States. In certain countries, our competitors have leading positions, such as China UnionPay in China, which is the sole
domestic inter-bank bankcard processor and operates the sole domestic bankcard acceptance mark in China due to local regulation. We also compete against
private-label cards, which can generally be used to make purchases solely at the sponsoring retail store, gasoline retailer or other merchant.
In the debit card market segment, Visa and MasterCard are the primary global brands. In addition, our Interlink and Visa Electron brands compete with
Maestro, owned by MasterCard, and various regional and country-specific debit network brands including STAR, NYCE, and PULSE in the United States,
EFTPOS in Australia and Interac in Canada. In addition to our PLUS brand, the primary cash access card brands are Cirrus, owned by MasterCard, and many
of the online debit network brands referenced above. In many countries, local debit brands are the primary brands, and our brands are used primarily to enable
cross-border transactions, which typically constitute a small portion of overall transaction volume.
We increasingly face competition from emerging players in the payment space, many of which are non-financial institution networks that have departed
from the more traditional "bank-centric" business model. The emergence of these competitive networks has primarily been via the online channel with a focus
on eCommerce and/or mobile technologies. PayPal is one example. It competes with Visa directly in some cases, yet PayPal also is one of Visa's largest
global eCommerce merchants.
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