Charged up
The chef didn't prepare her ostrich special today, or his favorite tuna tartare on fried seaweed, but Carl Pascarella, CEO of Visa USA, seems delighted with the other choices on the menu. Pascarella, a 62-year-old avid runner, opts for an Atkins-friendly starter of Sonoma greens with fried capers, followed by poached chicken on a Mediterranean-style salad of artichoke hearts and other fancy vegetables.
From his seat in a corner booth, he happily surveys the crowded tables surrounding him at Hawthorne Lane, one of San Francisco's toniest restaurants, nestled in a quiet alley in the tech district. After several lean years, business has come roaring back, to the delight of Pascarella, who was one of the founding investors in the restaurant.
Plastic power. Business is booming at his day job, too. Americans used Visa credit cards, check cards, debit cards, prepaid cards, and online bill paying to make nearly 20 percent more transactions last year, totaling more than $1 trillion in payments. The reason for the growth, Pascarella says, is choice. No matter how consumers want to pay--even possibly using their cellphones or personal digital assistants in the future--Visa is striving to offer a convenient option.
Pascarella is clearly a choice junkie himself. He's got at least seven different Visa cards: one to build up rewards at Starbucks, another for frequent-flier miles, others to check foreign currency transactions, and others just to try. And while Visa's ritzy new Signature card is making gains among affluent spenders who dine at places like Hawthorne Lane, Visa is also making inroads into the McDonald's market. The company is rapidly expanding its system that allows fast-food diners to swipe cards for their meal and go without waiting for approval. "Who's going to steal a McDonald's dinner?" Pascarella asks. Though an estimated 5.7 million Americans were victims of credit card fraud last year, and a recent study found that debit card fraud is growing rapidly, Pascarella insists that Visa's computer tracking system has pushed payment fraud to an all-time low of 5 cents per $100 spent. "Fraud isn't an issue right now," he asserts.
Pascarella is retiring in September, leaving on his own terms the job he has held for 12 years: "Few CEO s get to go out on top and choose the time of their exit." He hopes to join a private equity firm. And he's helping find a successor. -Kim Clark
This story appears in the February 28, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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