The ultimate sign that his company's latest venture is a success, according to Mr Greg Twitcher, Visa's general manager for Ireland, will be if the general public doesn't realise it occurred.

Visa's European branch, which currently falls under the umbrella of Visa International, is soon expected to become a new, distinct entity called Visa Europe.

"The biggest challenge is going to be making sure it happens without anyone noticing," Mr Twitcher says.

The new company will still be a member of Visa International, but will have its own separate European identity and more flexibility to meet the demands of its European customers and member banks, Mr Twitcher believes.

"It will give us the ability to react much more quickly to changing circumstances in Europe," he says.

"It will allow us to bring products and services to the market much quicker than we have been able to in the past, because we're part of a much bigger global organisation."

Such benefits may not be tangible to the average consumer, but Mr Twitcher thinks his organisation will run much more smoothly as a result.

"The benefit for the Irish consumer is going to accrue over a number of years; it's not going to be immediate," he says.

The incorporation of Visa Europe has been in discussion for about four years, Mr Twitcher says, since he started at Visa.

It's been endorsed by Visa's European and international boards and the European Commission. The only hurdle left is the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Visa International is based in San Francisco, California, and so the IRS is sorting out the tax implications of changing the ownership of the company's European division. This accounts for about 35 per cent of the company's revenue, according to David Masters of Visa's corporate communications department.

But Mr Twitcher and Mr Masters seem confident that receiving approval from the IRS is only a matter of time.

"We're hoping to hear from them soon," Mr Masters says.

The change comes as Visa's business in the Republic is growing.

The critical measure of Visa's progress in the Republic, according to Mr Twitcher, is a statistic called "point of sale consumer expenditure volume \". Essentially, this statistic refers to the amount of goods and services consumers are purchasing on their cards.

Point of sale CEV differs from gross CEV, which includes automatic teller machine (ATM) transactions.

There is an important distinction between these two figures for Visa, because the company generates part of its revenues from volume fees (charges paid by banks based on the frequency of card usage).

Volume fees can be paid to Visa by both banks involved in a transaction - the bank that issued the card to the consumer and the bank the merchant uses to deposit its income.

Mr Twitcher sums up Visa's philosophy: "We don't want people going to an ATM, then coming to the supermarket and paying for their groceries. We want them to pay for their groceries with their Visa card."

Visa's 2003 point of sale CEV in the Republic, €5.2 billion, rose 6.2 per cent compared with the previous year. Evidence, Mr. Twitcher says, "that the work we're doing on our strategy side is starting to yield some benefits".

Still, Irish consumers use cheques at the point of sale more than any other European market, according to Mr Twitcher, so it may be a challenge to persuade punters to change their behaviour.

One carrot Visa plans to offer consumers is a new type of card that stores data in a more secure chip, instead of a magnetic strip. Transactions with the new card will be consummated with the consumer entering a four-digit personal identification number (PIN) instead of signing a paper receipt.

Mr Twitcher says that about 70 per cent of credit card fraud is committed by "skimming", in which a criminal uses a device that reads the data from the card's magnetic strip. The data are then put onto what Mr Twitcher calls "white plastic" or a fake card. A criminal could then conceivably use the fake card at an ATM or even in a store if it looks authentic.

Additionally, chip and PIN technology provides retailers with the ability to store more customer data such as loyalty points, and it will speed up transactions, Mr Twitcher asserts.

"I'm not saying that Visa card payment is slow, but you'll be amazed at how much quicker it is once the chip is in place," he says.

Chip and PIN cards have already been used in parts of Europe, including a town trial in Northampton in the UK, and soon the technology will make its way to the Republic.

Two towns in Co Kildare - Naas and Newbridge - are expected to make the transition to chip and PIN this summer, according to Mr Barry O'Mahony of the Irish Payment Services Organisation (IPSO).

Mr O'Mahony expects chip and PIN to begin making inroads in other parts of the State this autumn.

Driving the shift to chip and PIN is the fact that fraud levels are higher in Europe than in other parts of the world. His company's ability to manage the change to chip and PIN technology will be a good example of the value of establishing a separate European entity, Mr Twitcher says.

"Our member banks will have much greater control over their strategies, their own ability to move things forward from a European perspective," he says.

Mr Trevor McEvoy of Visa member-bank AIB seems to concur with Mr Twitcher.

"Chip and PIN technology is being widely introduced throughout Europe, whereas there may not be the same sense of urgency in some other geographies," he says.

"Regulation in Europe differs from other regions such as the US. It makes sense for Visa to handle the business on a European basis."