Thank you for the opportunity to speak before the House of Commons Industry Committee on the future of e-commerce and mobile payments.
My name is Mike Bradley and I am responsible for Products at Visa Canada.
It might be helpful to start with an overview of Visa. We are a payments network. Our job is to deliver payment products that help us with our mission to be Canada's best way to pay and be paid. Our solutions are designed to serve two groups of end customers—consumers and the retailers that accept Visa cards. We compete vigorously with other methods of payment—cash, cheques, and electronic funds transfer systems as well as other card payment networks such as MasterCard, American Express, and Interac.
In short, the payments market is highly competitive at all levels. Visa remains a global leader in the payments industry. We enable payments for financial institutions, merchants, governments, and consumers in more than 200 countries. We have one of the world's largest and most advanced processing networks, VisaNet, which can handle up to 20,000 transactions per second. Every day, VisaNet sustains 300,000 cyberattacks on average, not one of which has ever been successful. Visa has invested heavily in anti-fraud technology, such as the recent migration to chip technology, which I am sure many of you use regularly now.
Our efforts have kept fraud near historic low levels, enabling cardholders to use Visa with increasing trust and confidence.
While we are known mostly for credit card products in Canada, we also offer business-to-business solutions and prepaid solutions that are convenient, reliable, and, most importantly, secure. Visa debit cards were launched last year by CIBC. For the first time, Canadians can use their debit card to pay for pizza or flowers over the phone, do their Christmas shopping at a wide variety of retailers online, and shop at 30 million merchants outside of Canada that accept Visa. In a limited way, Canada has now joined the 160 countries around the world where Visa debit is available. We believe that making this offer available will improve the ability of Canadians to shop internationally and buy and sell online in Canada.
To go back to today's discussion, clearly the widespread adoption of Internet and mobile devices is changing the way people connect and transact across the globe. The numbers speak for themselves. Facebook has over 750 million members and millions of merchants, and now operates its own currency called “Facebook credits”. Google recently announced that it will also enter the payments space.
Yet in Canada and around the world, Visa has remained key to the growth of e-commerce. According to a StatsCan survey for online purchases, 89% of Canadians use credit cards. In 2010, e-commerce already represented 13% of Visa's total payment volume. After more than 40 years operating in Canada, we've remained relevant because our value propositions have met the needs of Canadian consumers and merchants. We offer zero liability that ensures that cardholders won't be held responsible if they are not using the card. Verification by Visa and the three-digit code on the back of your card protects merchants and consumers from fraud, and the e-promise offers cardholders an avenue to settle disputes when shopping online.
In May, Visa announced our digital wallet. The digital wallet and mobile payment services will deliver greater consumer choice, convenience, and control. It will assist our clients in growing their business and help e-commerce merchants by reducing abandoned shopping carts online.
How will it work? A consumer may receive a digital wallet from their bank, facilitated through a trusted relationship and through a secure channel such as online banking. The consumer may load multiple cards from multiple issuers and even multiple brands into the wallet. When the customer is ready to make a purchase from a participating merchant, there's no need to enter payment card and shipping information. It will be an easy “click to buy” shopping experience. The investments we are making in these new solutions will bring greater value to merchants, who are likely to see fewer abandoned shopping carts online and, ultimately, higher sales.
Our digital wallet solution also operates seamlessly with merchants across channels. When a person is ready to make a payment using a mobile device, the consumer can use their existing Visa account to pay through Visa payWave just by waving their phone near a device instead of inserting or swiping a card.
This is the same payWave technology that exists on millions of Visa cards today and is growing in volume at merchants such as McDonald's, Second Cup, and Petro-Canada.
Our mobile application....
Was that the six-minute bell?