Visa USA Completes Roll Out of Visa Direct Exchange

Creates a Single Gateway to all Services of World’s Leading Payments Network

Completion of Five-Year Project Replaces Legacy System, Introduces Operational Efficiencies; Advanced Payments Products, Services to Reach Customers Faster, With Dramatic Cost Savings

SAN FRANCISCO – May 17, 2005 – Visa today announced the final implementation of Visa Direct Exchange, a five-year project to completely redesign and re-engineer the way U.S. financial institutions and retailers connect with Visa’s payments processing network. Visa Direct Exchange dramatically broadens the types of services Visa can offer to financial institutions and merchants, while greatly reducing the costs of developing and deploying new payment products and services.

Part of Visa’s ongoing technology investment and commitment in meeting the demand for electronic payments, Visa Direct Exchange has created a modern payment “gateway” to VisaNet, the world’s largest, most reliable payments network, which today serves as the backbone for roughly one-seventh of American consumer expenditures, connecting more businesses with more customers than any other payment network.

Direct Exchange has replaced a legacy system of Visa access points, based on proprietary, mainframe technology, with an advanced payment infrastructure based on modern, Internet technologies and simplified communications links.

As a result, member financial institutions and merchants who connect directly to VisaNet are saving hundreds of millions of dollars by eliminating costly communications links and reducing the time it takes to bring advanced payment and information services online. Already, Visa Direct Exchange is enabling advanced services, making it faster and easier for banks and merchants to resolve disputed transactions with cardholders; helping businesses track commercial card spending and streamlining the way businesses pay and get paid; while reducing the average time for the network to authorize individual transactions to 1.4 seconds.

“In effect, we have completely re-designed the way financial institutions and merchants access Visa services and have created an extremely flexible payment platform,” said John Partridge, CEO of Inovant, Visa’s technology organization responsible for global processing and technology development. “Instead of our Members having to conform to our system, we are now flexible enough to conform to their needs, and as a result have drastically reduced implementation time and cost for new payment products and services.”

Direct Exchange is a prime example of Visa’s ongoing investment in technology that will usher in a new era in payments, empowering merchants and financial institutions to create a plethora of value-added services. “For more than three decades Visa has lead the payments industry with innovative products and services,” said Mike Dreyer, Senior Vice President of Processing and Emerging Products at Visa USA, “Today more than ever, we are in a position to meet market demands and deliver advanced payment services – in large part because of our close partnership with Member financial institutions and the technology investments we have made to meet their needs.”

Among the benefits for users, the completion of Visa Direct Exchange has given rise to a host of new services and has:
• Dramatically reduced the time for a transaction to be authorized to an average 1.4 seconds
• Provides a delivery channel for enhanced information on individual transactions, so Members can better monitor traffic/transaction flows and tailor products and services
• Speeds the resolution of cardholder disputes, saving back-office time and expense. Already, all U.S. member banks are using Visa Resolve Online (VROL), an advanced Web solutions tool, to conduct dispute resolutions via a Web interface, cutting dispute resolution times to under 30 days, and saving merchants and Members millions in charge-back savings
• Boosts the speed and throughput of transactions processing, handling more than 170 different file types of almost any size that users transmit to Visa, while maintaining Visa’s stringent levels of data security and accuracy.

At the same time, financial institutions – and large merchants that connect directly to VisaNet – can now interact with all of Visa’s world-class payment services over a single communications channel. That eliminates numerous costly communications links that were needed in the past.

“The payments industry is evolving, and we’re leading that change,” Partridge said. “Direct Exchange realizes our vision of integrating open technology standards and the power of Internet technologies into Visa’s payment system, and has dramatically broadened the type of services we are able to offer to financial institutions, merchants and cardholders.”

About Visa
Visa USA is the nation`s leading payment brand and largest payment system, enabling banks to provide their consumers and business customers with a wide variety of payment alternatives tailored to meet their evolving needs. Visa USA is committed to increasing the choice, convenience, acceptance, and security of Visa payments for all stakeholders in the payments systems - Members, cardholders and merchants. Through its 14,000 Member financial institutions, more than 463 million Visa-branded cards have been issued to cardholders in the United States. Last year, U.S.-based financial institutions relied on Visa`s processing system, VisaNet, to facilitate $1.3 trillion in transactions with virtually 100 percent reliability.

Worldwide, cardholders in over 150 countries carry more than 1 billion Visa-branded cards, accounting for more than $3 trillion in annual transaction volume.

Visa offers a trusted, reliable and convenient way to access and mobilize financial resources - anytime, anywhere, anyway.