Visa and Global Partners Expand Access to Cross-Border Payments for Consumers and SMBs

In today’s connected world, moving money for consumers and businesses should be as simple and routine as sending a text message. Yet, in many cases, consumers and businesses still rely on manual, paper-based processes, high fees and cash to send money to friends, families and business partners. Through Visa Direct, a real-time¹ push payment solution that has processed 2 billion transactions² in the past year, Visa is working with partners and clients around the world to simplify, digitize and drive costs down in the rapidly-growing³ remittances space.

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Adding to its current ecosystem of remittance partners around the world, Visa today announced that TransferWise, a global technology company for international payments, will begin offering its customers an additional capability to quickly and securely move money to debit cards in real-time. The integrated service, initially available in Spain, is also planned to go live in Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic and Bulgaria. TransferWise gives customers a clear understanding of their fee structure upfront, providing transparency into the cost associated with sending and receiving money internationally. TransferWise plans to continue to collaborate with Visa and scale its offering using Visa Direct, throughout Europe and globally in 2020.

“Technology is bringing us closer together, yet there are still challenges that it hasn’t solved when it comes to individuals and small businesses moving money around the world,” said Bill Sheley, SVP and Global Head of Visa Direct, Visa. “The TransferWise collaboration is the latest addition to Visa’s efforts to help our clients enable individuals and small businesses to send and receive international payments quickly and securely by utilizing the power of Visa Direct.”

Visa is working with financial institutions, technology partners and remittance leaders, including EMQ, MoneyGram, and Remitly, to bring Visa Direct functionality to market around the world – reaching accounts via push to card capabilities in over 200 countries – all via a single connection point.

“TransferWise is on a mission to move money around the world in a cost efficient, quick and transparent way,” said Kristo Käärmann, CEO and co-founder of TransferWise. “Integrating Visa Direct further eases the transfer process and brings us another step closer to achieving our mission.”

Visa recently acquired Earthport, one of the world’s largest independent ACH networks. The combined offering, which will bring together Visa’s existing capabilities and the Earthport network, will give Visa Direct clients the ability to push payments to the majority of the world’s banked population – through a single connection. This is a key element of Visa’s goal to being a single connection point – a network of networks – for thousands of financial institutions and billions of user endpoints around the world.

About Visa Inc.

Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is the world’s leader in digital payments. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, reliable and secure payment network - enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. Our advanced global processing network, VisaNet, provides secure and reliable payments around the world, and is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second. Our relentless focus on innovation is a catalyst for the rapid growth of digital commerce on any device for everyone, everywhere. As the world moves from analog to digital, Visa is applying our brand, products, people, network and scale to reshape the future of commerce. For more information, visit usa.visa.com/about-visa.html, https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/blog.html and @VisaNews.

¹ Actual fund availability depends on receiving financial institution and region. Visa requires fast-funds enabled issuers to make funds available to their recipient cardholders within a maximum of 30 minutes of approving the transaction. Please refer to your Visa representative for more information.

² https://s1.q4cdn.com/050606653/files/doc_financials/2019/q4/CORRECTED-TRANSCRIPT-Visa,-Inc.(V-US),-Q4-2019-Earnings-Call,-24-October-2019-5-00-PM-ET.pdf Data refers to Visa’s Fiscal Year 2019, which ended September 2019.

³ World Bank, Record High Remittances Sent Globally in 2018

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Contact information

Visa Inc.
Caylah Novak
cnovak@visa.com