Cover:
The Smart Visa Program for Merchants: Thinking Ahead

First Inside 2-Panel Spread/Left:
More Satisfied Customers, Better Business
Some are calling it a revolution. Others are simply saying that today's move by more and more financial institutions and consumers toward chip-enabled smart cards represents a fundamental change in how people are using technology to enhance personal convenience.

The Smart Visa Program is an innovative payment card platform that uses microchip technology to help merchants increase sales and offer greater customer convenience. As more financial institutions have begun issuing chip-powered cards, you can expect more of your customers to be carrying Smart Visa cards.

• More than 10 million chip-based Smart Visa cards have been issued in the U.S. to date.
• More than 60 million Smart Visa cards have been issued worldwide.

First Inside 2-Panel Spread/Right:
"Smart" Is What Consumers Want
Busy people need a single card that serves as a convenient and secure payment device and provides personalized benefits, such as a way to store electronic coupons and personal data like emergency medical information, special dates, and passwords.

In fact, recent research illustrates that consumers are looking for three main product attributes when it comes to smart payment products: simplicity, gratification, and security. The Smart Visa Program:

• Delivers simplicity by helping consumers streamline their finances and consolidate the cards in their wallets.
• Provides gratification in the form of customized reward programs and convenient redemption.
• Enhances online security so consumers can shop online with greater confidence.

• People 21 to 40 years old
• Equally appealing to both men and women
• Annual household income between $50,000 and $100,000
• College-educated
• Have used Internet for 3 years; more than 50% for 5 years
• Most married, but high interest among singles
• More than half have kids at home

A Smart Tool To Have Online
Every day more consumers are buying PCs and using the Internet, but concerns about security are making some consumers reluctant to shop online. With Smart Visa, consumers have a safe and secure way to shop online from the comfort of their homes, using Smart Visa cards and a chip reader connected to their PCs.

Personal computer manufacturers are already producing PCs with built-in chip readers, and card issuers are providing easy-to-install chip readers to cardholders whose PCs don't already have one.

In terms of the Internet, Smart Visa cards have the potential to integrate the online world with the physical world; for example, by allowing cardholders to store downloaded coupons they can redeem at merchant locations while shopping.

A Smart Idea for Business
Both a brand and a technology platform, Smart Visa combines the purchasing power of traditional payment cards with smart chip technology to bring cardholders the convenience, flexibility, and functionality they want.

For merchants, Visa offers easy entry into the growing smart card market and a powerful way to reward customers with value-added services that offer additional convenience while shopping.

Inside 3-Panel Spread:
Smart Visa Program Overview
The Smart Visa program provides both a brand identity and a technology platform. The chip embedded in smart cards contains 100 times the memory of traditional magnetic stripe cards, and facilitates the integration of payment and value-added applications such as dollar and service credits, coupons and punch cards, and promotional program rewards and codes.

The chip in Smart Visa cards also provides access to secure, exclusive Internet content and read-write capability when using smart card readers installed at cash registers, in free-standing kiosks, and in Smart Visa card users' PCs.

The Smart Visa Technology Platform comes with four pre-packaged applications:

• Smart Visa Payment provides intelligent credit and debit payment capabilities and meets globally accepted standards for payment via chip. It also enables "Verified by Visa," a powerful Visa tool offering highly reliable cardholder authentication and security.
• Smart Visa Access provides secure Web access using the chip to store a pass code that the cardholder must provide each time the smart card is used. Options range from a simple ID and password to full public key implementations.
• Smart Visa Rewards enables merchants to customize card usage incentive programs for cardholders who have chip-based cards. Merchants can choose from options that include punch card programs (for example, buy 10, get one free), "dollars off" or "percentage off" discount coupons, offers to spend a certain amount and receive a gift certificate or free product, and exclusive benefits and services for preferred customers.
• Smart Storage or Convenience Storage lets cardholders store personal information online, such as birthdays, frequent flier account numbers and earned points, and emergency medical information.

Lots of Smart Ways for Merchants To Use It
The Smart Visa Program offers merchants many valuable features, including:

• Integrated online and offline customer activities, such as coupon downloading for in-store redemption, online reward redemption for in-store fulfillment, and warranty registration
• Pass code protection to make online transactions more secure
• Promotions that help you better manage inventory
• The ability to effectively target promotions
• A single card that can be used to support coalition merchant marketing programs

• Increased sales resulting from integrating a payment vehicle with value-added programs
• Greater efficiency and lower cost of operation for customer reward programs, because customer targeting is more precise
• A memorable way to differentiate your customer reward program from those of the competition — and keep your business in the lead
• The ability to easily develop reward programs that build and enhance relationships with new and existing customers by rewarding customer purchasing behavior immediately
• The ability of multiple and diverse programs to reside on the same chip, including alliance programs
• A pre-developed Smart Visa Platform that gets you up and running quickly and efficiently

• More secure Internet transactions, since the chip is virtually impossible to counterfeit
• Promotional programs that can be tailored to the customer, and "smart storage," which allows customers to store personal information on the chip
• Rewards program membership cards that can be consolidated on a single card, with no need to clip and carry coupons
• Rewards redeemable wherever customers prefer — online or at actual physical locations

Visa is working with industry leaders to increase smart card issuance, usage, and acceptance in the U.S. We're creating more smart card awareness through marketing, public relations activities, and effective Smart Visa branding.

Visa is also helping to build a smart card infrastructure, working closely with processors and device manufacturers to pave the way for chip acceptance.

For More Information
The Smart Visa Program offers an ideal way to enter the smart card market quickly and cost-effectively. To learn more about how you can be at the forefront of the smart card movement, please contact your Visa representative or your Acquirer/processor representative today.

BACK TO SAMPLES