Visa Launches Advisory Service for Money Movement Industry

Visa has debuted a service to help customers navigate the $200 trillion money movement sector.

The payments giant’s Money Movement Advisory Practice — announced Tuesday (Aug. 27) for customers in the U.S. and Canada — is a value-added service from Visa Consulting & Analytics (VCA), the payments consulting advisory arm of Visa.

“Visa’s Money Movement Advisory Practice is a strategic response to the increasing demand for frictionless payments and mobile experiences,” the company said in a news release. “‘Money Movement,’ which encompasses multiple ways to facilitate the transfer of funds across various platforms and channels, has emerged as a frequent area of client inquiries.”

According to the release, Visa’s Money Movement solutions, including the Visa Direct network, bolster real-time, secure transactions for low- and high-value payments, helping clients reach up to 8.5 billion endpoints across more than 190 countries and territories, in 160 currencies, leading to a more innovative financial ecosystem.

“Clients are actively seeking effective strategies to meet the increasing customer demand for quick, reliable payments,” said Kate Manfred, Visa’s North America head of advisory services. “Visa can be their strategic partner, offering innovative solutions for money movement that will drive new sources of growth and customer retention.”

The new practice leverages VCA’s network of more than 1,300 consultants, data scientists, technology developers and product designers across 75 offices around the world to help clients with their top Money Movement priorities, such as strategy definition and user experience optimization, Visa said.

Visa teamed last month with banking software company Temenos to provide the Visa Direct money movement solution to banks.

“By combining Visa Direct’s capabilities with our flexible Payments Hub and integrated account services, we are empowering banks to turn on a new distribution option with ease and provide their customers with seamless and secure international payment experiences,” Mick Fennell, business line director — payments at Temenos, said in a news release.

Visa’s efforts, via Visa Direct, have made inroads into driving the connectivity required to fuel instant payments, Ruben Salazar, then-senior vice president and global head of Visa Direct, told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster in an interview late last year.

The payment network and its partners have developed aliases and directories that allow instant access to sender and receiver bank accounts by connecting to emails or mobile devices — even nicknames.

“The alias is connected to multiple payment capabilities or credentials and … connect one network to another network to facilitate [faster] transactions,” Salazar said.