Visa launches cross-border payments for businesses

Visa Inc. has announced the commercial launch of its B2B Connect network, which it says will give financial institutions an ability to quickly and securely process high-value corporate cross-border payments globally. Described as a first of its kind, the cross-border B2B payments network streamlines payments and delivers rich set of data for financial institutions and their corporate clients.

The Visa B2B Connect launch will cover 30 global trade corridors, with an aim to expand to as many as 90 markets by end of 2019.

“Launching Visa B2B Connect marks an important industry milestone which will accelerate the evolution of how commercial payments move around the world,” said Kevin Phalen, SVP, global head of Visa Business Solutions. “By creating a solution that facilitates direct, bank to bank transactions, we are eliminating friction associated with key industry pain points. With Visa B2B Connect, we are making payments quicker and simpler, while enhancing transparency and consistency of data.”

Visa B2B Connect removes friction and time spent on cross-border corporate transactions by facilitating transactions from the bank of origin directly to the beneficiary bank. The network’s unique digital identity feature tokenizes an organization’s sensitive business information, such as banking details and account numbers, giving them a unique identifier that can be used to facilitate transactions on the network.

Partners, including Bottomline, FIS and IBM are integral parts of the future scale of Visa B2B Connect. Bottomline and FIS are bringing Visa B2B Connect platform access to its participating bank clients. Along with Visa’s core assets, Visa B2B Connect utilizes open source Hyperledger Fabric framework from the Linux Foundation, in partnership with IBM. This helps provide an improved process to facilitate financial transactions on a scalable, permissioned network.

“Working together on Visa B2B Connect, we are combining the strengths of the world’s leader in electronic payments with IBM’s recognized expertise in helping scale distributed ledger technology. This is a unique example of how blockchain-based architecture can help transform B2B value chains by facilitating secure, trusted transactions globally,” said Marie Wieck, general manager, IBM Blockchain.

CALEB OJEWALE