Word: visa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Force Base, the closing of which devastated the Portsmouth area. The Administration has already delivered a number of other pot sweeteners to New Hampshire. In early December the state received an accelerated payment of Medicaid funds that will balance its budget. The State Department has announced that a visa-processing office will operate on the grounds of the defunct air base. Meanwhile, the Small Business Administration has designated New Hampshire the first state to benefit from a lending program that will compensate for the shortage of commercial credit...
...math and physics teacher, Wernher came to the United States, and Cambridge, on a student visa in the winter...
...most years, about 30% of all credit cards are in the penalty box, stashed away by consumers who are trying to get their spending under control. But these aren't normal times. Right now, fully half of Citicorp's 30 million Visa and MasterCards are dormant. To chairman John Reed, that's worrisome. As the % largest issuer of such cards, Citicorp relies on the profit from those operations (last year: $610 million) to offset disasters like the depression in commercial real estate. As Americans get serious about whittling down their debts, the profit cushion for many bankers is getting uncomfortably...
With Optima, Amex had planned to cash in on a part of the card business the company had always disdained: revolving credit. Amex had issued only charge cards, which had to be paid in full each month. But Visa and MasterCard had successfully turned credit cards into a consumer lending vehicle, and were gaining a huge share of the total charge volume at the expense of Amex's green, gold and platinum cards. (Visa has 257 million cards worldwide vs. 163 million for MasterCard and 37 million for Amex.) So American Express decided to counterattack with a credit card...
Adding to the card division's headaches have been a series of revolts by disgruntled merchants demanding that the company lower the rate it imposes for handling customer transactions. Traditionally, American Express has charged merchants a premium -- as high as 4.25% for most retailers, about twice what Visa and MasterCard charge. In justifying its rate, Amex contends that its customers tend to be bigger spenders than bank-card holders. But as Visa and MasterCard have become more competitive in the prestige-card market, merchants have lost patience with Amex's higher premium...