What Sujatha V Kumar teaches about brand purpose

So what we're seeing is India is moving and all forms of payment are growing and pretty much similar to the way it is but probably the scale abroad since it started earlier is higher So Jathar, I mean the government is pushing for cashless payments This has been happening for the past one and a half to two years now And how what impact has that had on Visa? Do you see your the base in terms of consumers becoming younger? What are the changes in the sort of inside and that you have from that? So yes, ever since demonetization

Happened there has been a lot of move towards Non-cash methods of payment the interesting thing to see is that Credit cards if you look at it, it's not a luxury It's a necessity and therefore what they end up doing is being a unifier So we don't have any one specific target group We actually look at a group what we call as ageless progressive so they could be at any age But you are progressive in mindset. You're open to technology. You're open to using new forms of Payment new ways of shopping new ways of travel if you have that open mindset

Then you are more likely to adopt these new forms of payment shopping travel etc So that's what we look at and we wouldn't definitely Limited to a specific age group because like we said this is something that affects everybody and as we move to more and more less of a cash society Everyone will you know have a need for a product like ours digital wallets have suddenly Become big they've grown a lot of young people have adopted digital wallets. How does that work for the credit card industry? How do you work with that ecosystem? Is it?

Is there some sort of a seamless interaction there? So that what is important to realize is visa is not just credit card Visa is a form of payment it's present in your credit card you hold but it's also there on all the online transactions So you're right since demonetization happened a lot of new forms of payments have come up whether it's mobile wallets Whether it's you know online tokenization whether it's credit cards Everything has seen a growth upi everything has seen a growth and Visa with its different form factors and it's in its

Technology is staying ahead and managing to be a part of all of that in a relevant way And is the experience the same in India versus global? What do you what are the top global trends in the in the cashless payment space that you see and are we are we? Going to see something interesting in the next few years that is sort of already taking place in other markets. Yes, absolutely So we are starting our journey. We actually started about a couple of years ago. I think with demonetization and Abroad it's already a much less cash society

So for example, we have our tap to pay which is the contactless visa card which allows Transactions up to 2,000 rupees in less than three seconds We're getting there But if you look at markets such as Singapore or Australia they're in very very high double digits on Percentage of people using that so what we're seeing is India is moving and all forms of payment are growing and Pretty much similar to the way it is but probably the scale abroad since it started earlier is higher What is what is the current penetration of credit cards in India?

Maybe I mean how will you take that number as a maybe a percentage of the pan? Base that is there in India. What is the number today? Well, so today as you credit cards is growing what we've seen is there is a much larger number of debit cards because everyone who has an account Gets a debit card and you have to separately apply for credit cards So it's a fraction of the number of debit cards that are there in the market So there are over 900 million debit cards in issuance while there is less than 50 million credit cards Has the growth rate picked up?

It's picked up but what's interesting to note is the spending on credit card is very high Because a lot of people are still using their debit cards as you know ATM withdrawal Which is what they originally looked at so that it's it's there's a huge growth that's being seen On credit cards. How as Visa are you looking to address issues of security issues of a prudent use because The way you use a credit card is something that needs to be understood and you can go very it can go wrong very easily, right?

I mean there are many stories out there. So how how is that being sort of also communicated because it's a responsibility angle there as well No, so absolutely credit cards is a very very safe and secure way to pay and at Visa We make sure that every transaction is encrypted secure and safe But you're right a lot of time the customers don't know that so a lot of effort is going into Educating consumers are the same in India you have for larger amounts you have you know two-factor authorization Whether it's for the CVV whether it's with the OTP

Slash pin that we have even in our contactless Payments for amounts less than two thousand there is an encryption there is a security that's taken care of so To ensure that customers are aware that this is the safest way to pay So what role does digital play in your overall marketing mix of course Visa is a brand driven digitally But in terms of your marketing What role does it play the storytelling is it sorry is it? Just driving demand for new customers so digital is a huge part we call ourselves digital led marketers

And that's because each and every person who uses our product is different So there's not a one-size-fit also obviously there is a blend of traditional and digital marketing because for something as basic as consumer education it needs to be given to everybody or for example for campaigns such as Contactless to make people aware that they can tap to pay without any OTP or pin up to 2,000 rupees That's something that's relevant for everybody. So you would resort a lot to traditional media But for a lot of offer based

Promotions, we also do a lot of cross-border transactions So it's important to try you know to target the right consumer who's traveling in the next 30 days Who's traveling next 30 to 60 days who's traveling post 60 days? So we use a lot of programmatic we use a lot of target led digital marketing I'm also reading my emails to know if I'm traveling and then accordingly No, no, we don't have any such access But what we do get is information sources as who's going to be traveling when through different websites and we use that to

Ideally target the right people with the right offers. So net net yes digital plays a very very big part of our marketing You