Visa raises debit card profile in Malaysia

• Visa launches new campaign to promote debit card usage
• Malaysia a strong performing debit card market for Visa
• Similar to campaigns in Singapore and Indonesia
  

Malaysia - A week into the launch of the "Visa Debit Spend & Win" campaign has already seen over 3,000 messages sent via SMS for the opportunity to win one of three Perodua Myvi cars up for grabs.

The campaign is Visa's latest attempt to encourage its debit cardholders to use the debit cards for daily purchases, and the promotion is being supported by a marketing campaign across print, point-of-sale, out-of-home, and online platforms.

"Globally there has been a shift in payment trends from paper-based cash and cheques to electronic payment systems. Malaysia is fast catching on this trend making this an opportune time to launch our campaign," Stuart Tomlinson, Visa's country manager for Malaysia said.

When asked if Visa was pushing the debit card hard this year to Malaysian cardholders because of the negative perception credit now has from the economic recession, Tomlinson said "yes and no."

"It's already an established product in Malaysia," he said.

In January, Maybank revealed it had signed 1,000,000 Maybankard Visa Debit customers ahead of its one-year target.

The "Visa Debit Spend & Win" promotion works when Visa debit cardholders spend at least RM20 in a single receipt at merchant locations across the country and send an SMS to enter the competition for the Perodua Myvi prize.

Point-of-sale materials for the campaign appear at Tesco, Giant, and Carrefour outlets while the digital element includes ads on Facebook, Friendster and Yahoo. Debit cards generally are used more by the youth.

Visa has recently launched similar campaigns in Singapore and Indonesia.

TBWA is Visa's Agency Of Record.

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