Retail sales using a Visa card now account for 7 per cent of global personal consumer expenditure (PCE), a figure that the company expects to increase to at least 12% by 2010.

Today global PCE is at $19 trillion and is comprised primarily of cash and cheque payments. Visa has seen an average annual increase of 12 per cent in its share of global PCE over the past five years.

Visa’s share of PCE is particularly high in selected domestic economies. Including retail sales and cash withdrawals, 68% of PCE in Iceland is on Visa cards, in South Korea the figure is 57% and 27% in the UK.

Malcolm Williamson, president and CEO, Visa International, says: "Electronic payments, and Visa products in particular, offer a wide range of benefits to consumers, merchants and businesses, including a choice of how and when to pay, enhanced security and global utility."

Worldwide, there are currently over 1.2 billion Visa cards accepted at more than 29 million locations, including 800,000 ATMs.

One of the major growth areas continues to be in debit cards. Visa's worldwide debit sales volume surpassed $1 trillion for the year ending June 30 2002, an increase of 22% on the previous year.

In the US, the number of Visa debit card transactions exceeded credit card transactions for the first time from January through June 2002. During this period, Visa USA processed 3.04 billion retail debit card transactions compared to 2.96 billion credit card transactions, despite the fact that the number of credit cards more than doubled that of debit. Worldwide, Visa debit card transactions grew at over twice the rate of credit.

In the credit card market, Visa saw growth of 12% globally with total sales volume of $1.24 trillion for the year ending June 2002.

Regionally, the strongest increase continues to be in emerging markets. Visa Asia Pacific saw a 42 per cent increase in overall sales volume while in Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa Visa saw a 37 per cent increase.

Another growth area is in prepaid card products, such as payroll cards, gift cards and money transfer cards. Visa estimates that the global market opportunity for these products stands at over $2 trillion.

Willamson adds: "It is very encouraging that, despite the downturn in the global economy over the past year, we continue to see strong double-digit growth, which reflects the value and convenience of electronic payments."