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.

(Source: Media)