Yesterday, Visa Inc. (V) announced a strategic product alliance with CashEdge and Fiserv Inc. (FISV) that will grant them access to VisaNet and enable them to globally integrate Visa’s personal payment service into the person-to-person (P2P) platforms, namely Popmoney of CashEdge and ZashPay of Fiserv. The new arrangement will further allow the participating banks’ customers to send money to a Visa account directly.
CashEdge and Fiserv are the leading providers of electronic P2P payment, account transfer and bill payment services to the US financial institutions. Moving beyond the point-of-sale system, Visa’s US account holders will now be able to globally deliver personal payments through any eligible Visa credit, debit or prepaid account.
Popmoney is CashEdge’s P2P email and mobile payments service. ZashPay also works in a similar way, whereby the bank customers of the participating financial institutions will now have the choice of selecting a Visa account as the destination for funds when making a personal payment. Hence, by simply entering the recipient’s 16-digit Visa account, email address or mobile phone number, consumers can send funds directly from their bank account to a recipient’s Visa account.
While the new business development service is expected to add flexibility to Visa, CashEdge and Fiserv’s payment solutions, this will act as a competitive tool for eBay Inc.’s (EBAY) PayPal service, which functions on similar lines.
Given the uncertain regulatory environment, which prepares to axe the revenue from the debit card industry, Visa is exploring new avenues of growth by investing in new processing and service platforms to facilitate more convenient and innovative payment methods, such as money transfer, mobile and prepaid payments coupled with eCommerce. This is a crucial attempt to align Visa’s business model to meet the growing needs of the time and retain its market share.
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