The Lafferty SE Asia Payment Cards Awards was the first of its kind in the region, being both wholly independent
 and based entirely on the opinions of consumers who hold and use payment cards.

 In order to capture the views of cardholders, Blackbox Research carried out a consumer poll across the five markets
 covered by the Awards. Over 5,000 card holders were interviewed in total, a minimum of 1,000 in each country. We
 also set quotas for each payment card type to ensure we had a large enough sample size on which to base each
 award: targets were minimum of 250 completed interviews for debit and premium cards and 500 for classic cards.
 To qualify for the survey, respondents needed to be using at least one payment card (credit or debit) and to have a
 bank account. The interviews were undertaken using an on-line research methodology. This is a reliable and accurate
 research method reflecting the more affluent target audience in the countries where we conducted the research.
 Fieldwork was carried out in August and September 2009.

 All of the leading card issuers in each market were initially invited to submit their nominations in each of award
 categories. The vast majority of issuers submitted their nominations by the deadline set. Where no nominations
 were received, Blackbox and Lafferty combined their market intelligence to put forward submissions on behalf of
 the banks. This ensured that the Awards are complete in their coverage. All of these nominations including those
 put forward by Blackbox / Lafferty were rated by consumers in each market. Note, consumers only rated the card
 products that were issued in their country and could only rate the in the card categories that they held (i.e. only
 debit card holders rate debit cards etc), and the products they were aware of. The questions were phrased to allow
 both holders and non-holders of nominated card products to express their views.