The winners will receive deluxe packages to the Rugby World Cup in Australia if they are able to run the most profitable card program during a global simulation, which begins on 30 April. Enrolment is open now and staffs at all Visa member banks are invited to apply.

The Visa Challenge 2003 is expected to draw more than 100 teams from Visa's member banks around the world.

Pauline Sahetapy, Director, Visa Business School, Asia Pacific said, "The Visa Challenge 2003 is an excellent opportunity for banks to increase their understanding of the payment card business and at the same time have a lot of excitement and fun. The challenge is another way Visa is helping its member banks raise the standards of their operations around the world."

How the Competition Works

The Visa Challenge 2003 is played over the Internet between teams drawn from Visa's 21,000 member banks around the globe. Each team must have at least four players with no limit to the number of teams each bank can enter. The teams operate within a fictional market place and compete head on to see whose strategy and decision making generate the greatest profits.

There will be two phases to the competition. The first will take place among teams from each of the four Visa geographical regions, namely Asia Pacific; Canada; European Union; and Central Europe, Middle East and Africa. There are five rounds to the competition, each representing one financial year. The regional winners will be announced by Visa on 11 July.

The regional winners will then be invited to fight it out head to head in a final competition. The final competition will run over two weeks using the same simulation as the main competition with minor enhancements. Each team will be required to devise a five-year strategy and will submit their decisions at the same time. The team with the greatest profits will be declared the global winner.

Introducing the Latest Technology

The Visa Challenge enables the teams taking part to introduce the latest technology and strategies appearing in the global payment card market. This includes emerging technologies such as smart cards and detailed segmented market demographics to help develop individual products.

The teams can also introduce loyalty programs and sophisticated risk and account management programs to retain their cardholders within a particular card program and make them profitable. Teams can also decide whether to run their own payment processing operations or outsource them to a third-party processor.

The Winners in 2002

The Visa Challenge 2003 is a global version of an earlier competition run in the European Union and CEMEA regions of Visa in 2002. The winner of the 2002 competition was a team from HSBC Qatar