Credit card company Visa has announced a suite of new products and services soon to be available across Asia Pacific. These solutions will address the future needs of businesses, merchants and consumers, and the financial institutions that serve them.
Visa says the way people pay and get paid has changed more in the past five years than in the last 50. Consumers have evolved, adapting to new payment experiences, from the advent of embedded, digital commerce to the rapid growth of different payment methods.
“The payments landscape is changing rapidly, and it is impacting the interactions between consumers and businesses,” said Visa’s TR Ramachandran. “For Visa, this is an opportunity to deliver innovations that improve payment experiences across Asia Pacific with greater flexibility, security, and convenience. Visa is committed to meeting the evolving demands of consumers and merchants, ensuring seamless and secure payments.”
These changes, which will begin to roll out across Asia Pacific, include:
Visa Flexible Credential
Visa Flexible Credential allows a single card product to toggle between payment methods. Consumers can easily set parameters or choose whether they use debit, credit, pay-in-four with instalments or even pay using rewards points all via the same, single Visa credential.
Since debuting the Olive card in Japan with Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company (SMCC) just over a year ago, there are now over three million SMCC cardholders taking advantage of the Visa Flexible Credential. The solution is currently available in Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Visa’s new wallet payment experience
Utilising its network expertise, Visa will connect different types of payments, giving consumers more ways to pay, regardless of form factor, whether online or offline and at point-of-sale terminals. Soon, consumers will be able to use their everyday wallets to scan and pay at any merchant that accepts Visa via scanning-enabled QR codes at merchants outside of their domestic markets.
Visa is working with QR providers, enabling these QR merchant networks to accept Visa payments. Visa is also working with digital wallet partners across the region, to enable users of these wallets to scan these QR codes and pay quickly and securely when they travel abroad.
Visa Payment Passkey
Built on the latest Fast Identity Online (FIDO) standards, the Visa Payment Passkey enables a consumer to verify and authenticate their identity and authorise online payments with a quick scan of their biometrics like their face or fingerprint, using authentication tools made available on their devices. When shopping online, Visa passkeys replace the need for passwords or one-time codes, enabling more streamlined and secure transactions.
Click to Pay
Click to Pay enables consumers to complete online transactions within a few clicks, powering a more seamless and secure checkout experience at scale. Consumers will need their registered email, phone number or Visa Payment Passkey to check-out online.
Data Tokens
Using its tokenisation infrastructure, Visa will now offer Visa data tokens, a new way for people to control their data and receive better shopping experiences, powered by AI. This token can be used by the merchant’s AI models to deliver real-time recommendations. Additionally, Visa ensures that consumers can track and manage shared data through their mobile banking app.
Visa Protect for Account-to-Account (A2A) Payments
Visa Protect for Account-to-Account Payments (Visa Protect for A2A) is designed to detect and reduce fraud across immediate account-to-account payments, including P2P digital wallets and QR code payments. Built specifically as a fraud prevention solution for real-time payments, this AI-powered service analyses up to 500 unique risk factors in real time, providing financial institutions with an immediate risk score to stop fraudulent transactions before they happen.
