Major credit card organizations shift their focus to commercial credit card programs as a channel for future growth. At the moment the market for commercial cards totals $1 billion per year.

Visa faced a growth rate of 20.6% in the European Union market, and at the moment can compete with the Multinational Corporate Program offered by MasterCard. MasterCard’s program was designed with the purpose of providing uniformity of service for cross-border transactions for business customers.

MasterCard’s Multinational Corporate Program is getting support from three major EU banks, Nordea, Royal Bank of Scotland and Societe Generale, in assisting businesses to bring down their euro currency invoice volume. Working in the Asia-Pacific region, MasterCard is getting help from Citigroup in reducing the amount of paperwork connected with invoice processing. These programs enhance the efficiency of operations offering cost savings of as much as 50%.

The Asian region will also see growth in demand for systems that reduce the amount of paperwork processing and offer flexible reporting options, and MasterCard will launch a program in association with Citigroup to get a foothold in the market. The program will cover Australia and Hong Kong and later extend to Malaysia and Singapore. Visa grew its business in the area by 23% in the year ended June 2004.