Visa reports success with Electron debit cards

JAKARTA (JP): Visa International said here on Tuesday that the number of its Visa Electron debit cardholders had exceeded one million since its first launch in the country earlier this year.

Visa country manager Ellyana C. Fuad said that Visa Electron debit cardholders in the country reached more than 1.5 million, with about 1.2 million coming from LippoBank's customers.

"Since its first launch in January this year, LippoBank has become the first bank to exceed the one million cardholder number in Indonesia, the first bank in southeast Asia, and the first bank in the Asia-Pacific," she said in a media gathering here.

Besides LippoBank, Visa has also cooperated with Bank Niaga, Bank Universal, and Bank Bali for the Visa Electron debit facility, Ellyana said, explaining that the other three banks had just launched their Visa services so they had not accumulated as many cardholders as LippoBank.

In 2001 Visa anticipates another four banks will join in the Visa Electron facility, giving the company about 300% growth during the year, she said.

"All bank customers are our target customers and in five years we want to achieve 12 million cardholders in Indonesia," Ellyana said.

Lippobank director of consumer banking Harry Sasongko claimed that the Visa Electron debit card is the first signature-based debit facility in Indonesia.

As simple as credit cards but without the high interest rates and the danger of overspending, the Visa Electron needs only the customer's signature for purchase approval, he said.

The debit card could be used in over 25,000 merchants in Indonesia, and about 10 million points of sales across the world, Harry said.

It could also be used at 35,000 automatic teller machines (ATMs) across Indonesia and at more than 500,000 ATMs in the world, he added.

Harry said that since the card's launch, the volume of transactions on the card had totaled Rp 75 billion (US$7.9 million), with Rp 18 billion worth of transactions during September alone.

"The success of LippoBank Visa Electron is mainly from being in the right place at the right time. We launched our product just when people were having bad experiences with credit cards and there high interest rates," he said.

He said that he expects to achieve at least two million cardholders in 2001.

LippoBank president Ian B. Clyne said that the bank's customers had increased by 400,000 in the last six months of the year to a total of 2.7 million customers.

"We will focus on increasing our customer base to over 4 million next year," he said.

The bank's third party's funds increased to Rp 7 trillion ($736.8 million) from Rp 3.5 trillion at the beginning of the year, Clyne said. (tnt)