Visa Intl eyes huge growth in plastic money transactions

MUMBAI: Visa International on Wednesday said that it expects an enormous growth in plastic money transactions in India in the next five-years.

"The usage of plastic money now is just 2.5 per cent of the USD-700 billion consumers are spending in India annually," Visa International Country Head, Uttam Nayak, told PTI today, after the company was selected by State Bank of India (SBI) as a joint venture partner for the merchant acquiring business.

The international average (of plastic money usage) is 9 per cent.

"Within the next five-years, we see a huge potential in this field. More people are converting to plastic money," he said.

It is Visa's first such kind of joint venture here and it expects that the tremendous success it gained in Brazil can be repeated in India, he said.

Visa entered Brazil through such a joint venture and within 12-years the number of terminals rose to 1.2-million from the earlier 50,000, he said.

Earlier today, India's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) said it has selected US-based Elavon Incorporation and Visa International as its joint venture partners for the merchant acquiring business.

This is after the bank had floated a Request For Proposal (RFP) for selection of joint venture (JV) partners for merchant acquiring business last year.