Visa uses mobile to educate teens on financial planning

By Dan Butcher

September 18, 2008

Financial Football from Visa & the NFL

Visa Inc. and Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias have launched a multichannel effort that includes mobile to improve the money management skills of high school students.

Treasurer Giannoulias kicked off this new financial literacy campaign—which includes an educational mobile game—at Kenwood Academy in Chicago with help from Visa officials and Chicago Bears’ quarterback Kyle Orton. Mr. Orton shared his personal experiences on the importance of money management with students, and then Treasurer Giannoulias and Orton led student teams in a game of Financial Football.

“Financial planning is an important life skill, but it’s a real challenge to get people to do, it’s like eating your vegetables,” said Jason Alderman, director of financial education for Visa, San Francisco. “Financial education is considered a dry subject, but with Kyle and a bunch of television coverage, we’re trying to make those vegetables look a little bit better on the plate.”

Treasurer Giannoulias distributed free copies of Financial Football, an interactive money management video game with an NFL theme, to every high school and public library in Illinois.

The centerpiece of Visa's nationwide educational initiative with the NFL and Players Inc., Financial Football helps students tackle their financial futures.

Kyle Orton is the starting quarterback for the NFL's Chicago Bears

This computer-based game is accompanied by a classroom curriculum and can also be downloaded for free on mobile phones.

In 2007, Financial Football became a free, first-of-its-kind mobile phone game.

Mobile customers can play the game on their cell phones by texting the word VISA to 24421.

Priceless play

“We want to harness the popularity of the NFL and use that to promote financial education,” Mr. Alderman said. “We don’t want to market to anyone under 18, and there’s nothing in there that promotes Visa’s products and services.

“So instead, the challenge is to get parents and teachers engaged, parents and teachers who are not as tech savvy as teenagers,” he said. “We’re hoping to get those adults to engage in both school and home environments.”

Demonstrating its support for having financial education begin at home and extend to the classroom, a recent study released by Visa shows 91 percent of consumers surveyed believe all high school students should take a financial education class before graduating.

Visa and Treasurer Giannoulias hope that Financial Football can help Illinois teens do just that.

“We think it’s a good route, because it gives the teenagers something that’s engaging and free,” Mr. Alderman said. “And it comes with a parental endorsement, which we think is really important for us to talk to students.”

Available online at http://www.illinois.practicalmoneyskills.com, Financial Football puts students’ fiscal knowledge to the test in an online simulation game environment by combining the structure and rules of the NFL with financial education questions of varying difficulty.

To score points, a team needs to answer a series of money management questions correctly.

Wrong answers and penalties can cost a team yardage. The team with the highest point total after four quarters wins the game.

This is part of a national educational campaign with Visa, the NFL and Players Inc., now in its fourth season.

Since 2006, Visa has reached agreements with seventeen states to distribute Financial Football to every high school in those states, including Illinois.

The other states are West Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, Nevada, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, Kentucky and Arizona.

Other professional football players will promote the game in their home state.

“We’ve partnered with the seventeen state governments to promote this,” Mr. Alderman said. “The game is available for parents and teachers for free nationwide.”
The online version of Financial Football has been downloaded more than 200,000 times.

Financial Football is part of Practical Money Skills for Life, a free, teacher-tested and teacher-approved financial education program that is available in English, Spanish and Chinese.

The program contains three comprehensive sections, complete with money management resources and lesson plans tailored for use at home, in the classroom or at work.

It also contains an array of tips to help prepare for life changing financial events, from planning for a baby to saving for college and retirement, as well as a number of other budget calculators and interactive games.

Visa also runs What’s My Score, a higher education consumer awareness program.

The Web site guides college students through the ABCs of a FICO credit score, from factors that can lower a score to ways on improving it, at no charge.

"High school kids need to know how to make smart money management decisions before heading off to college or entering the workforce," said Kyle Orton in a press release. "It takes the combined efforts of parents, teachers and mentors within the community to give teenagers a strong background in personal finance."