Bankruptcy

Visa Does Not Issue Cards or Extend Credit.

By Adam Levitin

The Union Station Metro station in DC is plastered with Visa ads.  Currency of Progress, Visa is a Payment Technology Company, etc.  But among the ones that was featured was this beauty:

One rarely sees such a defensive ad.  When was the last time you saw a company advertising what it does not do?  That bespeaks a major branding problem.  It might as well have said "I am not a crook" or "We do not harm small furry animals."  The ad is true, but not what one would expect.  (Technically, I don't think the ad is quite true.  Visa doesn't extend consumer credit, but likely extends some sort of daylight overdraft credit to its members due to payments imbalances.) 

Clearly Visa wants to disassociate itself politically with its member banks.  I emphasize politically because the Union Station Metro stop is one of the ones used by Capitol Hill staffers.  I haven't seen this particular barrage elsewhere in the DC Metro, which makes me wonder if it is a targeted campaign aimed at Hill staffers (in DC one also hears card industry radio ads about interchange that aren't aired elsewhere--this is the Beltway bubble). 

What is Visa so concerned about, though?  Financial regulatory reform has largely ignored entities like Visa.  I've got to think that this is about interchange legislation, and this looks like the ad of a company that is running scared. 

Full post as published by Credit Slips on January 05, 2010 (boomark / email).