Visa Europe has posted a record growth in 2012, underpinned by consumers’ increased use of debit cards and e-commerce. The company, however, reported declining POS spending growth and a significant drop in the number of new processing agreements.
Total revenue grew by over 10%, up to EUR1.1bn for the year ending in September 2012, despite what the company has called a "challenging economic climate".
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Spend on Visa-branded debit cards exceeded EUR1tn within the year for the first time, with an annual increase of almost 9%. Commercial and prepaid cards have also performed well, with a 17.6 and 18.3% increase respectively.
E-commerce proved to be a key factor in driving growth, with online Visa spending increasing by 16% and reaching EUR200bn. In the UK, e-commerce is stronger than anywhere else in the Old Continent, representing a quarter of all spend on a Visa card.
"Debit, which accounts for almost 80% of Visa card spending in Europe, continues to grow strongly while e-commerce has become the fastest growing part of our business and is set to grow further as the market continues to mature," Visa Europe chief executive Peter Ayliffe said.
Against these positive results, the company also saw a significant decrease year on year in new processing agreements – 505 were signed in 2012, compared to 1,285 in the previous year. The impact of the economic crisis on the high street was also evident from POS spending volumes’ growth, which fell from 17.2% to 9.1%.
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By GlobalDataThe independently-owned European arm of Visa said it has invested EUR1bn in its technology and infrastructure over the last six years and will continue to invest, concentrating resources in accelerating the "mass adoption" of contactless payments for card and mobile devices.
"The past six years have been about preparing and building the European payments infrastructure to support European commerce and the delivery of new payment technologies," Ayliffe said. "The year ahead will see us putting mobile contactless payments into consumers’ hands, and introducing digital wallets on a mass scale for the first time."
Following the trends in the industry, Visa Europe will launch the integrated digital wallet V.me in the UK, France and Spain, to enable online purchases with a simple log in and without passing card’s information to the merchant.
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