InformationWeek

September 15, 1997

Visa Debits The Vendors

ixing the year 2000 problem involves partners. Just ask Visa International. It spent more than five years helping to prepare the credit-card industry for the year 2000, and it recently declared the world would be ready by this October for cards with expiration dates in 2000 and beyond. But despite Visa's massive efforts, some software and systems vendors are moving too slowly for both Visa's external and internal compliance efforts.

Visa has pushed point-of-sale systems vendors to make their systems compliant. Still, a Tec-America Corp. system installed over two years ago at Produce Palace International, an upscale grocer in Warren, Mich., is the focus of the first year 2000 lawsuit. Cards expiring in 2000 repeatedly crashed the system and its 10 cash registers, according to Mark Yarsike, one of the store's owners.

Vendor shortcomings are also plaguing Visa's effort to make its internal systems year 2000 compliant. Visa has 15% of its applications entering the testing phase. "Ease of use isn't there with the automated tools on the market," complains John McCarthy, VP for the year 2000 project at Visa, in Foster City, Calif. "We're reviewing tools but haven't seen anything we like."

Similarly, Visa acquired an IBM mainframe and dedicated it to the 2000 project, "but until the year-2000-compliant version of OS/390 software was loaded, we couldn't test," says McCarthy. Some tools and utilities for the operating system are still not compliant, he adds, "so we have to wait for vendors to provide us with them."

Still, McCarthy has not been completely disappointed by the vendor community. Among the tools that look promis ing are File-Aid for MVS from Compuware Corp. in Framington Hills, Mich., which can populate files with data, edit data, and age data, and Moebius from Unitech Systems Inc. in Naperville, Ill., which helps review data after processing it through an application to pinpoint discrepancies.

The right tools could help make the most of the time left. With 14 scenarios to test, Visa will generate a lot of reports. Despite the uncertainties about what and when the vendor community will deliver for testing purposes, McCarthy has no doubts about what his future holds: "We expect to be compliant in 1998, but we'll spend all of 1999 continuously testing it."

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