The account, estimated at between US$3,000 to $5,000 per month, was previously handled by T&A Communications. According to Stuart Tomlinson, Visa International country manager for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos,the prospect of Vietnam's WTO accession offers high hopes for growth."The Vietnamese market has seen tremendous improvement in the payment card industry in previous years, averaging growth of over 70 per cent per year, and with the great leap forward to come," he said.
"In a very cash-centric economy, where only six per cent of the population even has bank accounts, the growth is yet to come."
The business shifted to TQPR without a pitch. The agency's general manager, Matthew Underwood, said public education is critical if Visa is to reach its 200 per cent growth target next year. "Our job will be a lot of public education campaigns," he said. "We've done a media audit and the bottom-line among the press is that they don't really know anything about credit cards."
According to Underwood, the agency will devise media relationship-building and education campaigns, to eventually become a sustained community relations initiative.
Visa's growth in Vietnam was initially stunted due to a product deficiency — its cards could not handle local currency transactions. Now that this has been rectified, it is expecting to outperform key rival MasterCard, which does not yet have a Vietnam office.
