Peter Scriven

For the Middle East has moved from being a very reluctant card holding region in 1995, with 800,000 cards and a $2.2 billion annual turnover, to a region with 4.5 million cardholders today. And annual turnover is up by a factor of ten to $23 billion.

'It is still not enough,' says Mr Scriven. 'We have only two per cent of total payments against around 15 per cent in Europe. Our challenge now is to move people from using their Visa cards for emergencies and holidays to using it for all their payments. Card loyalty programmes are one method, and so are the prize draws that continue to be immensely popular in this part of the world.

'Unfortunately our biggest competitor here is cash, with 97 per cent of transactions, but we are gradually educating the market about the advantages of cards. Certain transactions such as hiring a car are already almost impossible with cash, and checking into a hotel abroad is also rather difficult without one.

'We conduct all our currency transfers at wholesale rates, and this is passed on to the cardholder which generally compensates for the charges associated with doing transactions abroad. So as travel from the Middle East has grown, so has the use of cards, and our powerful brand name has also been a great advantage. We know from customer surveys that the Visa name is trusted by consumers, and that we have high brand recognition'.

This is one reason why Visa sponsors and partners with such a wide range of activities and events. These range from the STARs conference this October in Dubai that will feature former US president Bill Clinton, to the sponsorship of this financial web site - note the Visa logo on every page. Visa has even become an equity partner in the Dubai Ideas Oasis. Why was that?

'We were the first equity investor in the DIO,' says Mr Scriven. 'We believe very strongly in the virtual world and the e-economy, and this seemed to be the perfect way to be involved in its creation. There is also the fact that we want to be involved in e-commerce payments functionality, though Visa already handles 55 per cent of all Internet payments world-wide.

'The world of shopping is getting smaller and we think that branding will become even more important as people begin to shop online. It is a question of using brands that you can trust when you can not see and feel real products.

'We certainly believe that it is only a matter of time before e-commerce becomes a reality in this part of the world, and applaud everything the Dubai Government has been doing to promote Internet use. Other countries in the region may be lagging behind, but there are all sorts of interesting initiatives coming through, you just have to look at the number of teenagers sat behind PCs to realise that this has to happen here'.

Visa is also busy developing smart cards with authorisation built into memory chips on the card. This virtually eliminates all possibility of fraud on the Internet, although Mr Scriven stresses that such fraud is actually extremely rare.

Dot-com collapse or not, Visa International is firmly pinning its colours to the Internet as the future for its services, and Mr Scriven promises further initiatives in cyberspace over the next few years.