In an effort to help remove friction from cross-border Business-to-Business (B2B) payments, Visa has been focused on bringing the Visa B2B Connect platform concept to reality.
Last week, at Singapore’s Fintech Festival, Visa announced a critical milestone for Visa B2B Connect. Innovators from Commerce Bank in the United States, Shinhan Bank in South Korea, Union Bank of Philippines and United Overseas Bank in Singapore, are now working with us to help us realize the next stage of our vision – the pilot phase of Visa B2B Connect. We are excited to announce that we have begun processing bank to-bank test transactions with these partners, with others to follow soon, as we gear up for the commercial launch, planned for mid-2018.
Attempting to make a cross-border payment today can be lengthy and cumbersome for banks and their corporate clients. Visa B2B Connect harnesses blockchain architecture and simplifies that equation by sending transactions over Visa’s network from the bank of origin directly to the recipient bank.
Throughout the process of expanding Visa’s B2B capabilities and offerings, we have kept creativity, agility and product flexibility as a priority, without taking an eye off our core principles of security, interoperability and governance. Those principles have helped to make Visa a leader in global payments, and they will continue to drive the innovation behind B2B Connect.
We know that adoption and scalability comes as a result of developer engagement. These critical stakeholders are the ones who take our capabilities and build solutions that can quickly reach multiple markets. That is why Visa B2B Connect is built with an API-first strategy. It is designed to harness the power of open APIs, available on Visa Developer Platform, and to unleash innovation in cross-border B2B payments.
Building value for our partners is also a top priority for Visa. Chris Wiedenmann, Vice President commercial payments and products at Commerce Bank said, “In a world of increasing global interconnectedness, the ability to make and receive payments quickly and transparently is critical for companies of all sizes. Commerce Bank is dedicated to delivering new and innovative solutions for our customers and, through our powerful relationship with Visa, we are excited to be participating in the Visa B2B Connect pilot.”
Visa is excited to build our current partnerships and foster new ones as we gear up for the commercial launch of Visa B2B Connect. If you would like to learn more about Visa B2B Connect, please contact the team at VisaB2BConnect@visa.com.
