Visa Direct provides a simple and secure way for businesses to make payments online. With Visa Direct, you can now send money to any Visa cardholder. Previously it was only possible to pull funds from a card, unless you were processing a refund. Visa Direct allows money to move both ways, opening up a lot of freedom for businesses.
With this system, you can push funds to a Visa Cardholder in real-time, giving instant and secure payment possibilities. You can use Visa Direct if you have a business that needs to process refunds, send money to clients and customers, or anything else that might require sending money with just a card number.
How Does Visa Direct Work?
With Visa Direct, all you need is a debit card number to send funds to the card holders account. You can connect to a dedicated Visa Direct API, which will let you set up and manage your Visa Direct payments.
Visa Direct uses tokenization, so once you’ve set a payment, you can setup recurring or future payments to the same card. It sends money in real-time with added visibility into the success of the payment.
With Visa Direct, you can make secure online payments to suppliers and customers without the hassle of having to transmit payment information with each transaction. It also allows businesses to take advantage of the huge Visa network, which has around 3 billion cards linked to it.
Advantages Of Visa Direct For Businesses
There are several advantages that give Visa Direct the power to allow businesses of any size to advance their payment systems:
Borderless Payments
Send and receive money in 160 currencies with currency support and foreign exchange capabilities. For growing businesses that need to be flexible, Visa Direct is a great solution so they can save on currency conversion fees.
Compliance Built-In
Visa carefully screens all its Visa Direct banking partners to ensure complete financial compliance is achieved. Visa also offers its own scoring system to help partners avoid risk and stay compliant.
Account To Account Funding
Using the ACH and RTP rails, Visa Direct allows you to fund directly to a bank account with no intermediary steps, which is great for keeping fees down and keeping trust high.
Business & Personal
Although Visa Direct is a great tool for businesses, it can also be used by consumers with personal accounts. Usually, your bank will have to be a participating institution to allow you to process and send Visa Direct payments, but it is currently widely available throughout Europe and America.
While you cannot use Visa Direct as a stand-alone service, its adoption by consumer banks and business banking services has been widespread. If your a personal banking customer, its very likely that your bank already offers Visa Direct in some form. If you are a business, you can easily integrate Visa Direct into your existing payment setup and start sending funds to Visa cards around the world.