Visa USA CEO to Step Down

Pascarella informed the Visa USA Board several months ago that he would not seek another term when his contract expires in September 2005. The Board approved Pascarellas transition plan and timing earlier this week. G. Patrick Phillips, president of Card Services for Bank of America and Chairman of the Visa USA Board of Directors, will lead the search process with active participation from Pascarella and the search committee. The committee will consider both internal and external candidates. Visa projects record annual results for 2004. Its transaction volume eclipsed $1 trillion in 2003, and preliminary second quarter 2004 results are among the strongest ever. For the quarter, Visa posted impressive gains across all product categories including 11 percent growth in credit, 21 percent growth in debit, 23 percent growth in commercial and 95 percent growth in Interlink transactions. In the first six months of this year alone, Visa expects to record sales volume growth of 19 percent compared to 11 percent for the same period last year. Based on these early numbers, Visa anticipates posting its seventh consecutive quarter of taking market share away from its competitors. Some of Visas milestones during Pascarellas tenure include: Reinvigorating the Visa brand following a market share slide in the early 1990s. Carl led Visas entry into and eventual leadership of the Co-branded card arena. Today, Visa remains the brand of choice among the countrys most popular co-branded card programs. Establishing debit cards as mainstream payment products. Through a combination of systems infrastructure developments and aggressive national advertising and marketing campaigns, Visa has driven the explosive rise in use of debit cards for payments, tapping into the $12 trillion payments market traditionally held by cash and checks. Debit volume today represents 59% of all Visa transactions up from only 7% in 1993. Expanding Visas commercial card business to include a suite of payments products and related information services that meet the needs of the broadest spectrum of businesses - from small business cards that feature the Visa Extras reward program to Visa commerce, a non-card payment service capable of processing multi-million dollar electronic procurement transactions. Since 1993, total Visa commercial volume has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 38 percent, exceeding $100 billion in 2003. And, in 2005, Visa expects to become the biggest player in the small business market. Revolutionizing Visas technological infrastructure with Direct Exchange, a massive systems re-architecture initiative that combined the flexibility and scalability of Internet Protocol-based technologies with the security and reliability of Visas proprietary legacy systems. The result was a payments processing and IT infrastructure that streamlined merchant and Member connectivity to Visa, facilitated new product introduction and allowed Visa to handle tremendous increases in transaction volume. Today, VisaNet processes as many transactions in one hour as the combined world stock exchanges process in an entire day. Leading the effort to migrate spending from cash and check to payment cards. In 2003, volume on Visa branded payment cards in the United States surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in the companys history. By the end of 2004, Visa payment cards together will account for 14% of all personal consumer expenditures, more than all other general purpose cards combined. Boosting Visas presence and prominence in Asia-Pacific. During his tenure as president of Visa Asia-Pacific (1983-1993), Carl helped take Visa from number four in the market to number one. When he returned from Asia in 1993, Visa had 50% market share in the region, and Visa card volume had grown from $3 billion in 1983 to $50 billion. Carl F. Pascarella