And the cross-border stories just keep on coming. In this posting on Cision PR Newswire, we see that the 2011 London-based startup named NOIRE uses Visa Direct to solve for certain cross-border use cases.
NOIRE provides merchant payment services and gateway solutions. Visa Direct is one of the faster payments solutions that we discussed in a recent webinar on that topic. The solution aims to overcome the friction and opacity associated with traditional cross-border payment methods, an area under intense scrutiny.
‘As cashless transactions begin to dominate more of everyone’s lives, it’s easy to assume that the framework for transferring funds effortlessly is already firmly in place….This might be the case in a single market, but in April 2020, the G20 group of countries published a report – ‘Enhancing Cross Border Payments’ – which set out the complexity of the many current arrangements for cross border paymentsConnecting merchants to emerging markets…According to the report, some transfers between jurisdictions can still take as long as 10 days and cost as much as 10% of the value of the transfer….It also found that payments sent from the UK to certain territories had to pass through four currencies and five banks and that out-dated technology, such as telex machines, was still being used….Furthermore, despite advances in technology, 6 out of 10 cross-border payments still require manual intervention, each one of which takes as long as 15 to 20 minutes.’
We covered cross-border in a member Viewpoint earlier this year, including B2C scenarios, which are associated with insurance payouts, international payroll, and individual contract staff in foreign locations, as well as B2B use cases such as e-commerce, invoiced payables for trade goods and services rendered, as well as traditional and alternative trade finance payments.
B2B use cases dominate the cross-border transaction landscape, but also continue to be executed through traditional methods, so they are the most in need of innovative approaches. There have been a number of ongoing innovations in the space, and no doubt we will see more in the next couple of years as real-time systems begin to interoperate.
‘At NOIRE, we integrate Visa Direct seamlessly and deliver an effective solution, in a way which is simple to use at every point of contact….Where payments to debit or prepaid cards could take as long as 5 business days to reach an account, those made with NOIRE, land within 30 minutes. Therefore, we enable our customers to send and receive funds between literally billions of worldwide accounts in a seamless and highly secure manner….Using Visa Direct via a payment service provider gives merchants a competitive advantage in their industry as they can send real time payouts to their customer’s cards.”…Saving time and therefore money is just one part of the equation, since Visa Direct also enables businesses to access hitherto inaccessible markets, trading at speed across borders, thousands of miles, multiple languages and a range of global currencies.’
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group