Visa encourages better money skills with new financial education website

Visa Europe launched a financial education website today called Better Money Skills (www.bettermoneyskills.com). This is a new resource for member banks to coach consumers on financial matters and ultimately help encourage responsible spending.

The website's content has been developed with the support and collaboration of the Citizens Advice Bureau.

This follows the successful launch of Visa Inc.'s MoneyChoices website in the USA. Analysis of the site showed that by encouraging indebted customers to use MoneyChoices, member banks saw reduced credit losses and operating costs as well as increased customer retention rates and credit stability.  The consumers themselves were also considerably less likely to face the distress of financial problems.

Initially for the UK market, bettermoneyskills.com is managed by Visa who can create and run separate sites for member banks, complete with their own branding. It is aimed at bank customers in the UK, in particular those that are financially distressed, to provide them with guidance, self-test modules and practical tools such as budget and borrowing calculators so they can manage their money better.

Mark Austin, Head of Consumer Credit for Visa Europe, said:
"Our vision for bettermoneyskills.com was to create a practical and easy-to-use website to help people manage their money more effectively. In partnership with a team of financial capability experts from the Citizens Advice Bureau, we developed this new tool to improve the financial health of consumers by providing general financial education and enhancing understanding of credit.

"We believe it can enhance our member banks’ existing responsible lending and financial education programmes, helping to reduce bad debt losses and operational costs.”

The website contains a series of educational modules on topics such as credit, borrowing, saving and common financial problems. It also contains quizzes for consumers to work out their financial personalities and test their knowledge as well as budgeting and debt calculators. In addition, the site includes a reference centre packed with contact details of organisations that offer free advice and a full glossary of financial terms.

The Better Money Skills website can be found at www.bettermoneyskills.com

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About Visa Europe
In Europe, there are over 350 million Visa debit, credit and commercial cards. In the 12 months ending December 2007, those cards were used to make purchases and cash withdrawals to the value of over €1.3 trillion. 11.4% of consumer spending at point of sale in Europe is with a Visa card.

Visa Europe is a membership association - an organisation owned and operated by its 4,600 European member banks – that was incorporated in July 2004. In October 2007, Visa Europe became independent of the new global Visa Inc., with an exclusive, irrevocable and perpetual licence in Europe.

As a dedicated European payment system it is able to respond quickly to the specific market needs of European banks and their customers - cardholders and retailers - and to meet the European Commission’s objective to create a true internal market for payments.

Visa enjoys unsurpassed acceptance around the world. In addition, Visa/PLUS is one of the world’s largest global ATM networks, offering cash access in local currency in over 170 countries.