Electronic payments are the future

Issuing your own Visa account and becoming a Visa client licensee will provide you with more flexibility, over the programme in the way it is designed and operated, but also comes with additional obligations.

Visa welcomes new participants to apply to operate within the Visa network. Organisations applying for a Visa licence may be asked to undertake certain activities, to mitigate risks during the beginning of the assessment process, and ongoing as a condition to granting or maintaining its Visa licence.

It is important to note that organisations must also be able to engage in the requested business from a local regulatory perspective.

Principal

A Principal can issue accounts and acquire merchants directly. They can process transactions and provide processing services. A Principal Licensee is required to settle funds resulting from customer transactions directly with Visa.

Associate

An Associate must be sponsored for a Visa licence by a Principal. Associates may, subject to written agreement with their sponsoring Principal, undertake almost all Visa activities. The main difference between a Principal and Associate is that an Associate's card and sales volumes will be attributed to its sponsor as the sponsor will be liable for settlement with Visa.

Regulatory & Compliance

You may be required to have local regulatory approvals to operate a Visa card programme including Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing policies and procedures in place.

Data Security

If you process, transfer, store account or privacy data, you may be required to be certified as Payment Card Industry/Data Security Standards (PCI/DSS) and be compliant.

Financial Considerations

As a Visa client licensee, you will be obligated to settle funds resulting from card holder transactions directly to Visa to enable Visa to then settle transactions through the acquirer to merchants. Visa will assess your organisation’s financial performance, company’s ownership structure/parental support, and brand and reputational attributes to determine your eligibility.

Brand

Significant opportunity to expand your brands to consumers and corporations directly.

Access

Access to Visa’s extensive network of partners to support the growth of your business.

Distribution

You will have the ability to expand your distribution through offering partners a programme sponsorship.

Partnering with an existing Visa client licensee to sponsor your programme can provide you with a quick simple method to gaining access to Visa’s network and systems for your programme to begin distributing Visa accounts.

Here are some important details to consider on how to partner. Firstly, a Programme Sponsor is a client of Visa with a licence and rights to issue accounts or acquire transactions in one or more markets with responsibility for providing access to the VISA network, transaction settlement obligations and for other regulatory compliance. They are also responsible for the submission, approval and compliance of any of their programmes through the Visa network.

Within Asia Pacific, a programme sponsor may include non-financial institutions but is typically domiciled in the country for which it is sponsoring programmes with partners. I.e. a partner wishing to distribute Visa accounts in Singapore would have a Programme Sponsor domiciled in Singapore to ensure they can meet local regulatory requirements.

Programme Sponsorship addresses organisations who wish to run their own card programmes, but do not have the need to become a full licensed Visa client licensee.

Identifying the most appropriate programme sponsor to complement and support your business plans requires a deliberate approach with the following considerations to begin with;

• Do the strategic goals of the organisation align to your own?
• What technical and operational capabilities exist to support your programmes functional requirements?
• What existing relationships do they have to complement your business priorities?
• How easily would it be to develop a commercial relationship?
• Do they have a suitable track record?

To find out more about Programme Sponsorship, contact Visa.

Visa Developer is transforming the way we connect to partners by making our network and value-added assets available as APIs. From geo-location to real-time alerts to tokenisation, our Visa Developer Centre offers you direct access to a growing number of APIs, tools and support so that you can start building easier, faster and more secure ways to power commerce. Discover how you can leverage these resources powered by the world’s largest payments network.

Payment methods

Use these APIs to develop secure ways for customers to pay online, seamlessly transfer funds or even use virtual currency.

General services

Expand your offerings by leveraging APIs that aid with anything from exchange rates to account validation.

Risk and fraud

Make payments more secure with APIs that can help catch fraud in real time or give customers more control over their card.

Visa offers a transaction capability that can send funds to a Visa account. This capability also referred to as ‘push-payments’ can be used to create multiple consumer and business facing applications including p2p transfers, market place payouts, corporate and government disbursements etc.

A basic person-to-person funds transfer service using this capability includes a “Pull” and “Push” operation using the Funds Transfer API.

The first step is to collect funds from the sender. As an Originator, you can obtain funds from the sender using any means available to you, such as by withdrawing funds from the sender’s bank account or by pulling funds from the sender’s Visa card. If the source of funds is a Visa card, you can use the Funds Transfer API to obtain them. The Funds Transfer API has a distinct operation that allows obtaining funds from a Visa card.

Once you have obtained funds from the sender using the Funds Transfer API or through other means, the next step is to push those funds to the recipient’s Visa account. The Funds Transfer API includes an operation for pushing funds to a single Visa account (PushFunds).

If the push payment is part of a Funds Disbursement service, only the push part of the funds transfer transaction is needed. The money to fund the disbursement is usually pulled from the sender’s bank account and settled outside the Visa network. Please visit the Visa Developer Platform for more details.