Visa rolls out real-time payments platform in Europe

Visa Direct enables person-to-person (P2P), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-business (B2B) payments with funds transfers to recipient accounts taking place within minutes.

For the European roll-out, Visa has partnered with Worldpay to equip merchants with the capability to send real-time payments to consumers. The card scheme is also releasing an API on its developer platform to help bank and merchant clients implement the technology.

To further push take-up, Visa in Europe has announced a mandate that requires card issuers to enable real-time payments by October 2018.

In other global markets where the technology is already available, Visa Direct saw volumes increase by 75% over last year. In the US, the platform enables push payments for a host of partners, including PayPal, Braintree, Square Cash, and Stripe.

Mike Lemberger, SVP of product solutions, Visa in Europe, comments: “Visa Direct is a proven platform that enables technology companies, businesses and financial institutions to meet the demand for real-time payments, backed by the ubiquity, cost-efficiency and speed of Visa’s global network.”