Visa Direct expands real-time payments in US
Visa is a crowd pleaser
Visa says more banks and companies in the US have chosen Visa Direct to expand their real-time payment services, including PayPal, Fiserv and Square.
Visa Direct is a payments platform designed to allow financial institutions, developers and partners to offer real-time person-to-person (P2P) payments and business disbursements such as insurance claims payments, contractor payments, tax refunds, and other forms. The platform can transfer funds from more than 200 million Visa debit cards in the US.
Recently, Early Warning, a company made up of financial institutions offering real-time payments, authentication and risk mitigation, said it will enable real-time P2P payments on its clearXchange network using US-issued debit cards through the Visa Direct platform.
David Godsman, head of emerging payments at Bank of America, says: “By working with Early Warning and Visa, we can offer consumers more choice and greater options for faster payments.”
Fiserv, the “first” firm to use Visa Direct for P2P payments, is already offering Visa Direct as part of its Popmoney personal payments service.
Additionally, last week PayPal and Visa announced that consumers will soon be able to “instantly withdraw” and move money from their PayPal and Venmo accounts to their bank account via their Visa debit cards using Visa Direct.
Visa says in the US, the real-time “push” payments market segment has been estimated to be valued at more than $10 trillion, which includes approximately $1 trillion in P2P payments and $9 trillion in various forms of disbursements and contractor payments.
It says at present, the majority of these payments are made with cash, cheques and through the Automated Clearing House (ACH).
Right said Fed
Will everyone really benefit from the real-time payments coming to the US?
Can the US regulator mandate the banking sector to adopt it?
And what are the chances of this new faster payments system becoming ubiquitous?
Banking Technology digs deeper, past the hype. Click here to read the article.
