Visa on Wednesday announced that customers will soon be able to tap Visa's point of sale network to pay one another. A combination of network enhancements, partnerships, and the creation of a new transaction type will make it possible for U.S. consumers to send and receive funds to any Visa credit, debit, or prepaid accounts anywhere in the world.
The new personal payment service aims to replace cumbersome cash and check payments between individuals by adding a new transaction type to the company's global payments processing network, VisaNet.
Alongside network enhancements, Visa announced strategic product agreements with CashEdge and Fiserv, which provide electronic person-to-person payment, bill payment, and account transfer services to U.S. financial institutions. The partnerships will grant CashEdge and Fiserv access to VisaNet so that they can integrate the Visa personal payment service into their Popmoney and ZashPay platforms.
"Through our agreements with Fiserv and CashEdge, we can accelerate the delivery of new and innovative Visa payments services, and better enable financial institutions to extend these services to customer," Visa's global head of products, Jim McCarthy, said in a statement.
When making a payment at a participating institution, customers will have the option to select a personal Visa account as a destination for funds. Transferring funds will be as easy as entering the recipient's 16-digit Visa account and e-mail address (or, alternatively, a mobile phone number).
The technology is old news for financial institutions outside the U.S. There are currently more than 70 programs globally for sending funds to Visa accounts; however, today's announcement represents the first time a major payment network has instituted a global requirement for institutions to accept incoming funds. Customers can expect the first implementations of Visa personal payments to emerge in the second half of this year—in time for Christmas, but, alas, not this week's poker night.