Crown Agents Bank partners Visa to power cross-border payments in emerging markets
UK-based Crown Agents Bank (CAB) is collaborating with Visa to power cross-border payments for clients in emerging markets, with a particular emphasis on streamlining “last mile” payment processes.
Crown Agents Bank in FX collaboration with Visa
The bank, which focuses on foreign exchange (FX) and cross-border payment services, will integrate its network into the real-time payment service Visa Direct to enable its customers to “move much lower value payments across emerging markets cost-effectively”.
This is also expected to optimise the management of large volumes of small transactions, which typically incur additional costs in emerging markets due to their high-risk interpretation by jurisdiction regulators.
Visa claims the network provides reach to more than 8.5 billion endpoints, such as accounts, digital wallets and cards, across more than 190 countries and territories worldwide.
Likewise, CAB’s network is said to support more than 100 currency types across over 700 currency pairs, with the bank facilitating £9.3 billion of flows into lower-income markets and £3.1 billion of development aid flows last year.
“Our combined capabilities and expertise mean we’re able to reduce the cost and friction associated with moving money across hard-to-reach markets,” explains CAB CEO Neeraj Kapur.
Another UK bank to recently integrate with Visa Direct is Revolut, which announced last week that it has tapped the service to deliver enhanced instant card transfer capabilities for its business customers.
