Software Developer Wins Trip to 2014 FIFA World Cup™ in Brazil in Grand Final of Visa Financial Football Competition

04/23/2014

Zul Aswat bin Hamdan pitted his financial literacy skills against nine other Malaysians in three rounds of competition over two hours, emerging as the grand prize winner of the 2014 Malaysia Financial Football competition.

After playing the game about 40 times throughout the five-week competition, the 36 year-old Software Developer from Nilai, Zul Aswat bin Hamdan wins the once-in-a-lifetime experience to catch the world’s biggest football event in Brazil.

Mr. Ng Kong Boon, Visa Country Manager, Malaysia presented  Zul Aswat with the grand prize of the 2014 FIFA World Cup package for two to Brazil, courtesy of Visa, an official sponsor of the 2014 FIFA World Cup™, as well as other prizes such as Sony products and Adidas merchandise to the other finalists.

The finalists were the top ten players on the leaderboard at the end of the five-week long Visa Financial Football online competition held from 12 March to 16 April 2014. The competition was held in partnership with AKPK (Malaysia’s Credit Counseling and Debt Management Agency) and seven of Visa’s bank partners – Aeon Credit Services, Bank Islam, BSN, Hong Leong Bank, Maybank, Public Bank and UOB – with the aim of teaching money management skills to young adults in Malaysia.

Visa Financial Football is a football-themed online game which was created and developed by global payments technology company Visa to teach financial literacy to members of the public worldwide. The game tests players’ money management skills such as budgeting, saving, financial planning and decision making, with multiple choice questions set at varying levels of difficulty. With each correct answer, players passed, dribbled and scored their way through an interactive football match. Players were awarded points based on the number of questions answered correctly, difficulty level and the number of goals scored.

Mr. Ng said: “Second year in its running, the Visa Financial Football competition is a key part of our financial literacy drive in Malaysia. I believe this is an innovative program that can channel Malaysians’ passion for football into a meaningful way to learn about personal money management and promote discussions on financial literacy. As this is World Cup year, Visa is pleased to be able to reward our Grand Prize winner with the ultimate prize of a trip to the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ in Brazil to experience the magic of the game live with other football fans from around the world.”

“Financial literacy is close to Visa’s heart and has been a key component of Visa’s corporate responsibility programs. We believe knowledge helps people thrive, not just survive, financially. This is why we are really honored to be able to work closely with the AKPK in Malaysia to extend our financial literacy education programs to all Malaysians in a fun and engaging way. Furthermore, it is heartening to see how our bank partners are also helping us reach more people through their extensive network,” added Mr. Ng.

For more information about Visa’s financial literacy initiatives in Asia and around the world, please visit our website.

 

About Visa

Visa is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments. We operate one of the world’s most advanced processing networks — VisaNet — that is capable of handling more than 47,000 transaction messages a second, with fraud protection for consumers and assured payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa’s innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, ahead of time with prepaid or later with credit products. For more information, visit usa.visa.com/about-visa, visacorporate.tumblr.com and @VisaNews.