Visa B2B Connect to transform cross-border payments

Global payments technology company, Visa Inc. has announced the commercial launch of the Visa B2B Connect network, giving financial institutions an ability to quickly and securely process high-value corporate cross-border payments globally. The Visa B2B Connect launch will cover more than 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 tokenises an organisation’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. Visa B2B Connect’s digital identity feature will transform the way information is exchanged in business-to-business cross-border transactions.

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 utilises 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 recognised 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 and transparent transactions globally,” added Marie Wieck, general manager, IBM Blockchain.

“With Visa B2B Connect, we are leveraging Visa’s existing assets and our expertise in cybersecurity, data privacy, the scale of our network – and layering that with new elements of distributed-ledger technology to meet unique needs of this industry,” concluded Sam Hamilton, SVP, data product development at Visa. “This lays the foundation for a service with the potential to transform cross-border payments.”