Not one of the most entertaining or informative ads I have seen off late. With the advent of ZooZoos most of the ads look weak and this ad is particularly weak - both for the medium and the message.

Visa, the world’s largest retail electronic payments network, has launched a new television advertising spot in India entitled “Why bother going to the ATM?”, reflecting the company’s focus to increase cardholder awareness for using Visa Debit cards at point-of-sale locations. (Source)

I am not going to post a YouTube video here but I am referring to the new Visa Debit ad. If you are watching TV in the past 7 days you cannot really miss it.

The message in the ad is this : Use Visa Debit card for all your purchases. Be it groceries or malls or the movies. This will save you a trip to the ATM and you don’t have to use cash at all.

I know that only 13% of world’s money is in physical form and the rest is in digits and bits. This new message will soon reduce the 13% figure. But, we have a problem here.

For the haircut, for the auto ride, for the bus ride, for the vegetables from the around the corner vendor and for the cigarette – we need cash.

The argument about use of Debit card for all purposes is flawed. It is not that the customer doesn’t know it already. There aren’t just too many outlets that accept cads. Or let me put it this way - no card can fit our diverse spending habits.

ATM withdrawals are free from any bank to any bank, which might actually save the distance you used to travel. The obvious solution is to expand the ATM network, which still is pretty low compared with China.

I like the Visa Debit for one reason. It advocates the use of debit cards against credit cards, which makes this a socially responsible campaign.