That steady growth passed a milestone earlier this year when small business transactions on Visa reached $103.5 billion on Visa Business cards. This represents a 32.2% increase over last year's growth and is a 29.9% gain in small business transactions in the second quarter over the second quarter of last year, Lal explained.

"Small business owners desire a secure, reliable payment solution which will empower them to better control and more efficiently manage their businesses. This milestone signifies that more small businesses are forgoing inefficient paper-based payment methods and increasingly recognizing the value of Visa Business cards for business purchases," Lal said.

But getting small business owners to use their business cards is only one part of the battle. A much bigger effort is being mounted to get more of the $4.7 trillion that small businesses spent in 2005 onto cards and that means making some significant changes to the sorts of transactions that are currently thought of as Visa transactions. "We have a great deal of room to grow," Lal said. "Last year, only $300 billion of the $4.7 trillion was spent on plastic and, of that, about $100 billion was spent on T&E, business travel and entertainment. We want to make Visa the payment method in more of these channels." Lal explained that, broadly, these payments break down into three categories, raw materials and supplies, utilities, and professional services such as accounting and legal services. Visa has made the most progress in the utilities channel, signing up utility companies around the country to begin accepting Visa payments. The materials and supplies and professional service payments are proving to be more of a challenge. "These are often the payments which are regular and which are done off an invoice or purchase order," Lal said. Often they are the sorts of payments that small business owners most often pay by check and which bring Visa unique hurdles, for example credit limits.

"We need to work with our issuers on credit limits in these transactions," Lal explained. It doesn't make sense for a business owner to have a Visa business card to use and to have a wholesaler agree to take the card and then not be able to use the card because of a credit limit, Lal added.

Lal said the Signature Business card was one of the tools designed to help solve this problem, but added that Visa was working with smaller issuers, such as credit unions, on the line of credit card which could also help. "Visa Signature Business is designed for small business owners who have the desire and need for greater purchasing power, premium rewards, and tools to more efficiently and easily manage their businesses," said Lal. "With small businesses today making the majority of purchases with checks and cash, our member financial institutions have an opportunity to offer a compelling new payment choice for small businesses and to increase loyalty and retention of this important segment."

The Signature Business Card has no preset spending limit.

Lal also pointed out that these increased acceptance efforts are backed up by Visa's strengths in market dominance and rewards. Even though the card brand has not yet reached the numbers of small business customers that it wants, it still is accepted in far more business-to-business transactions than any of the other competing brands.

"If I am a small business owner, why would I want to keep using checks when Visa not only offers me acceptance with most if not all of my suppliers, as well as my utility company and offers me rewards, too?"

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