Why Visa Direct is changing the face of cross-border payments

14^th October 2020

As cashless transactions begin to dominate more of our lives, it’s easy to assume that the framework for transferring funds effortlessly is already firmly in place.

This might be the case in a single market, but in April 2020, the G20 group of countries published a report – ‘Enhancing Cross Border Payments’ – which set out the complexity of the many current arrangements for cross border payments.

According to the report, some transfers between jurisdictions can still take as long as 10 days and cost as much as 10% of the value of the transfer.

It also found that payments sent from the UK to certain territories had to pass through four currencies and five banks and that out-dated technology, such as telex machines, was still being used.

Furthermore, despite advances in technology, 6 out of 10 cross-border payments still require manual intervention, each one of which takes as long as 15 to 20 minutes.

This is all the nightmare of cross-border payments which too many businesses are still struggling with today. 

Tim Thompson, CEO at NOIRE, a boutique payments service provider, believes that every business which operates on a global basis, needs Visa Direct in conjunction with a comprehensive payment platform, such as NOIRE, to prevent these problems.

“Visa Direct removes barriers by reaching 99% of bank accounts in 88 countries, deals with more than 160 currencies and, during the 2019 financial year, facilitated 2 billion transactions.

At NOIRE, we integrate Visa Direct seamlessly and deliver an effective solution, in a way which is simple to use at every point of contact.    

Where payments to debit or prepaid cards could take as long as 5 business days to reach an account, those made with NOIRE, land within 30 minutes. Therefore, we enable our customers to send and receive funds between literally billions of worldwide accounts in a seamless and highly secure manner.

Should any problems arise from the use of different currencies, conflicting payment conventions and overlapping regulatory regimes, these can be dealt with by an expert payment service provider, such as NOIRE, rather than by your business or your customers.

Using Visa Direct via a payment service provider gives merchants a competitive advantage in their industry as they can send real time payouts to their customer’s cards.”

So, how does Visa Direct actually work?

Well, Visa Direct leverages the global reach of Visa and combines it with the latest which operates in virtual real time 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.

Saving time and therefore money is just one part of the equation, since Visa Direct also enables businesses to access hitherto inaccessible markets, trading at speed across borders, thousands of miles, multiple languages and a range of global currencies.

When using Visa Direct, your business can position itself to move seamlessly into this new reality, providing your customers with the kind of experience which they need to be able to take for granted, and enable you to concentrate on core business activity with your payment services in the safest possible hands.      

About NOIRE

NOIRE is a boutique payments services and risk management company, offering gateway technology, merchant accounts and customer support.

They provide fast pay-outs for merchants, enabling them to send money to customers for pay-outs, account withdrawals and winnings.   

NOIRE merchants can send money to billions of cards and accounts worldwide; both domestic and cross border, in over 160 currencies.

For more information on Visa Direct, or to contact NOIRE, visit their website www.noire.com.