Visa 2015 Annual Report Download - page 37

provide incentives to promote routing preference and acceptance growth. We already engage in many
co-branding efforts, in which we contract with merchants, who directly receive incentives from us. As
these and other relationships become more prevalent and take on a greater importance to our
business, our success will increasingly depend on our ability to sustain and grow these relationships.
Outside the U.S., some governments only permit local providers to complete domestic processing,
which prohibits us from overseeing the end-to-end processing of the transactions. Therefore, we
depend on our close working relationships with our clients or other third party processors in these
regions to effectively manage the processing of transactions involving Visa-branded cards. Our inability
to oversee the end-to-end processing for cards carrying our brands in these countries may put us at a
competitive disadvantage by limiting our ability to ensure the quality of the services supporting our
brands.
In addition, we depend on third parties and our financial institution clients to provide various
services associated with our payments network on our behalf, and to the extent that such third-party
vendors or our financial institution clients fail to perform or deliver adequate services, our business and
reputation could be impaired.
Negative perception of our company in the marketplace may affect our brands and reputation.
Our brands and reputation are key assets of our business. The ability to attract and retain account
holders and financial institution clients to Visa-branded products depends highly upon the external
perceptions of our company and our industry’s quality of service, use and protection of account holder
data, regulatory compliance, financial condition, corporate responsibility and other factors. Negative
perception or publicity, particularly in light of the rapid, widespread use of social media channels, could
cause damage to our brands and reputation. Our business may also be affected by actions taken by
our clients or other third parties, or by circumstances that are outside of our control:
• Our clients and other third parties may take actions that we do not believe to be in the best
interests of our brands or that are inconsistent with our own business practices.
• Until we are able to complete the proposed acquisition of Visa Europe, our limited control
over the quality of service and promotion of our brands in Europe could affect our brands
and reputation globally. While Visa Europe has very broad latitude to use our brands and
technology within its region, Visa Europe is not required to spend any minimum amount of
money conducting research on brand performance, promoting or maintaining the strength of
our brands.
• Any negative perception of the U.S. arising from its political, economic, social or other
positions could harm the perception of our company and our brands globally by associating
Visa with those positions.
Any of these factors could turn clients and consumers away from our brand and products, require
us to take on additional liabilities and costs, result in greater regulatory or legislative scrutiny, and harm
our overall business.
We may continue to be affected by economic events in financial markets around the world.
The current threats to global economic growth include geopolitical instability in Brazil, Venezuela,
Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East and other oil producing countries, which could affect oil prices,
economic fragility in the Eurozone and in the U.S., higher interest rates hurting the housing market,
sluggish job creation, political discord, spending cuts and debt defaults. While there continues to be
some improvements in advanced economies, emerging economies continue to suffer with slower
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