An £8 million (U.S. $14.5 million) campaign by Switch/Maestro that features a pair of adventurous penguins on holiday in Venice and Paris has helped to drive a massive upsurge in the number of consumers using their Switch-branded bank cards overseas

According to a report in The Scotsman, the latest figures from Switch, the UK's leading debit card network, show a 17 percent year-on-year growth in 2003 in the number of people using overseas ATMs to withdraw cash and a 46 percent increase in consumers using their Switch cards to make point-of-sale purchases. Switch predicts that over the next three years the number of ATM transactions will double, while there will be a sixfold increase in point-of-sale transactions using debit cards. Analysts believe 2004 will be another record year for the debit card overseas as people turn to the convenience of plastic, particularly in the burgeoning short-break market, according to the Scotsman. Nigel Turner, Switch/Maestro's marketing director, said there had been a marked growth in awareness over the last 12 months.Despite talk of a downturn in international travel, the number of overseas visits and the level of holiday spending by Britons has been steadily increasing over the last 20 years. In 1983 under 15 million holidays were taken, and less than £3 billion (U.S. $5.4 billion) spent, compared with spending of around £18 billion (U.S. $32.8 billion) on 40 million visits in 2003. There are currently 22 million UK Switch/Maestro cardholders who can use their debit card in 900,000 ATMs and at seven million retail locations worldwide.