Payments giant Visa is expanding its ‘Fintech Fast Track’ programme beyond card issuance to connect members to Visa’s real-time money movement platform, Visa Direct. The move comes as the digital payment leader recognises the possibilities created by embedding payment capabilities.
By expanding Fintech Fast Track to include Visa Direct, fintechs can now launch programmes through their financial institutions to enable transfers to eligible cards, bank accounts, and wallets around the world.
Visa Direct supports multiple use cases, such as person-to-person payments and account-to-account transfers, business and government payouts to individuals or small businesses, and merchant settlements and refunds. It provides a single point of access and reaches over 8.5 billion endpoints capability, including over three billion cards, three billion accounts and 2.5 billion digital wallets.
Alongside this move, Visa Consulting & Analytics has also developed capabilities to support the key needs of Fintech Fast Track partners. These partners can now work with the Visa Consulting & Analytics team on one project from a curated selection of offerings, specifically designed to help early-stage fintechs grow their portfolio.
Vanessa Colella, SVP and global head of innovation and digital partnerships at Visa, discussed the move: “Fintechs are a vital growth engine for the payments industry, and Visa is committed to supporting their progress.
“The enhanced Fast Track programme offers fintechs personalised tools and resources to innovate and excel. We believe this will be a game-changer that will catalyse new growth opportunities within this community, and further our mission to uplift everyone, everywhere.
“Our portfolio of fintech partners is diverse and continues to expand. This generation of fintechs is addressing challenges and pain points for specific groups, professions, and online communities, and designing tools to bridge the gaps in the payment ecosystem.”
Supporting fintechs
The Fintech Fast Track programme offers partners a solution from Visa’s menu of options, including:
- Merchant Search API: allows businesses to search for information about a merchant.
- Visa Stop Payment Service: enables financial institutions to stop payment on a specific check or range of checks.
- Visa Risk Manager solution: helps financial institutions manage and mitigate payment risks. The programme now also provides a 12-month free trial of this solution.
Additionally, the programme now includes the opportunity for up to $100,000 worth of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Activate credits for cloud consumption, business support, and personalized content and offers.
Niural, a global payroll and HR platform for growing startups and enterprises, is one fintech leveraging the resources provided through the Fast Track programme. It helps businesses with payroll and contractor payments in the US and internationally in over 150 countries, using compliant contracts and payouts through its platform. Niural will also be offering a business Visa Debit card to help facilitate payouts to independent workers.
