Visa has concluded the Jordan edition of its financial literacy programme.

“We at Visa strove to increase people’s knowledge in the financial management field and to provide them with the tools they needed to effectively manage their personal funds. We succeeded in spreading our message using creative and innovative, yet easy to follow knowledge-spreading tools,” said head of corporate communication for North Africa and Levant Tony Gougassian.

Gougassian also stated that this campaign is not the only means that Visa adopts to spread knowledge to communities across the region.

He spoke of Visa’s bilingual website ehsib.com. This website was launched two years ago to cater specifically to the Middle East region by addressing several issues such as those pertaining to maximizing the security, convenience aspects related to the use of bank services and cards.

The official launch of the campaign took place at the Dar Al Anda Gallery on June 30, 2007. Following the campaign’s launch, Visa published the first of its Financial Literacy Campaign’s educational cartoon series on September 28 2007 in the Al Waseet newspaper, said a Visa spokesman.

This one-month eight-part cartoon series featured the four Fahman Family characters created by Abu Mahjoob Creative Productions and over a period of four weeks it was published in all daily newspapers.

As part of this Kingdom-wide initiative, Visa also launched an SMS competition, on October 1, 2007. This one-month competition was powered by Beecell and targeted Zain subscribers offering a new question every day about Visa via SMS on 96040.

Contestants were asked to answer questions such as: “Would you disclose more personal information if you used (a) a cheque or  (b) a bank card?”, or “Do you pay interest on purchases made using a debit cards?”

With each correct response participants made throughout the campaign’s duration, they increased their chances to win fantastic prizes including 24 state of the art digital appliances, audio systems, TVs, microwaves and ovens. Reflecting a wide participation rate, the competition received response of over 20,000 SMS messages. – TradeArabia News Service