Child safety online

We have a duty to act as responsible citizens, not just to protect our reputation but because it’s the right thing to do. One example of this is the work we do to combat child abuse online.

Our rules are clear – our products and services must not be used illegally.

Since 2001, card acquirers – Visa members that sign up retailers and businesses to accept Visa debit, credit or prepaid cards – have been prohibited from accepting payments from sites that are trading in child abuse images or materials.

We also run a programme that crawls through hundreds of millions of online pages, looking out for any instances where the Visa acceptance logo is shown on the same site as child abuse imagery. We then work proactively with our members to withdraw acceptance from these retailers and businesses and work with police authorities worldwide to track the perpetrators of this criminal activity and close such sites.

“Visa’s stance on the commercial exploitation of child abuse is unequivocal – we do not allow our products to be used to facilitate these transactions and we have a global programme in place that constantly monitors the internet.”Valerie Dias, Executive Vice-President & Chief Risk and Compliance Officer, Visa Europe

Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre

We’re a founding partner of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) – a UK-based organisation that’s dedicated to protecting children from sexual exploitation. Since 2006, we have been providing financial support, intelligence and expertise to help identify those engaged in the sexual exploitation of children.

The CEOP acts as a centre of excellence in the pursuit of child abusers. It carries out criminal investigations and works with police forces and law enforcement agencies around the world via the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT).

The CEOP also leads the European Financial Coalition (EFC), which brings together organisations to track and disrupt criminal activity and to identify those involved in distributing abusive material.

Visa has supported CEOP initiatives in Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania and the UK. In 2009-2010, our focus will be on two key projects: 

• The ‘Thinkuknow’ education programme which aims to educate young people, parents and carers about the dangers children could face when using online and mobile technology
• Building capacity and developing training initiatives in areas that are known to be a base for criminals involved in the commercial distribution of child abuse images.