Visa certainly knows the importance of brand loyalty.
During the company’s July 24 third-quarter earnings conference call, CEO Charlie Scharf alluded to the importance of customer loyalty.
“Starting with our issuing co-brands, we renewed our co-brand credit card partnership with Southwest Airlines in the United States,” Scharf said, according to Seeking Alpha. “Visa will continue to be the exclusive payment network for Southwest’s terrific co-brand credit card. This renewal is an extension of our 15-year-long standing partnership with Southwest Airlines. It represents one of our largest and fastest-growing co-brand partnerships in the world. We renewed an important co-brand partnership with Avios, the loyalty program for British Airways and Iberia, a partnership with Visa covering the United States, Canada, Bermuda, and the Caribbean. AAA extended our longstanding 37-year credit card partnership agreement. We also renewed the credit card portfolio for Wyndham Rewards, the loyalty program for Wyndham Hotel Group, the world’s largest hotel company based on number of hotels.”
Scharf said Visa partners with banks, retailers, governments, and technology companies.
“We believe our ability to help them grow will help accelerate broader economic growth within China, both in the cities as well as the rural areas,” Scharf said. “And we continue to view this as a significant and important opportunity, and one which is very long term in nature. And our work to transform commerce and build out digital payment platforms to support our clients continues. First on Visa Checkout, we continue to gain momentum. We have over 270 financial institution partners globally. We have over 160,000 merchants who are currently live globally, with over $50 billion in total addressable volume. New merchant partners include U.S. companies such as Under Armour, Taco Bell, Dunkin’ Donuts, Williams-Sonoma, Eddie Bauer, Living Social in Canada, and Starbucks in Australia.”
Visa currently has more than five million registered users for Visa Checkout, which has launched in 16 markets around the world. New markets include China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, Brazil, Colombia, the UAE, and South Africa.
What’s more, the company continues to expand the Visa token service. More than 2,300 financial institutions and banking partners are participating. In addition, Apple Pay in the U.S. and Google globally. International expansion of Visa’s token service will begin later in the fall within the U.S., Canada, and Asia-Pacific regions.