Local Visa Electron cardholdes can access their bank deposits from any of the 5,000 point-of-sale (PoS)/electronic data capture (EDC) terminals and over a 100 ATMs. Member banks will process Visa Electron transactions in exactly the same way as they process transactions for other Visa products. No additional investments are called for as existing infrastructure and procedures will be well used.

Visa International country-manager for India Chandra Agnihotri said: "It (Visa Electron) is a logical extension of two significant achievements that prepare for a wide-scale introduction of Visa Electron: Access to shared Visa ATMs across the country for Indian and international Visa cardholders, and ouralliance with Equifax Venture Infotek to develop the payment infrastructure and provide the platform for products like debit, which depend on a terminalised environment."

Visa Electron's introduction comes in the wake of Visa International's like move in the Asia-Pacific region, and is part of a strategy to further strengthen its global lead in debit cards.

Debit card products have caught on in a big way since their launch, and according to Visa International director of deposit access Doug Lawson, "International growth rates are in the region of 30 per cent compared with the 10 per cent in credit cards."

Globally, Visa has more debit cards under the Visa debit and Visa Electron marks and claims generation of more volumes than any other organisation. At end-June '98, 242 million Visa debit cards registered a global sales volume of over $490 billion. Compared with the 6 million Visa Electron cards with a volume of $5 million, the same at end-June '98 stood at 63 million with $121 billion in volumes froma billion transactions.

Debit cards currently accouunt for 30 per cent of Visa Global volume, which is projected to grow dramatically with the introduction of Visa Electron in the Asia-Pacific region if indications in Europe at 87 per cent and Latin America at 106 per cent are anything to go by. Visa International estimates that by 2001, it will have 210 million Visa Electron cards worldwide generating volumes exceeding $200 billion.