Tag: visa mobile payments

Visa releases mobile payments developer platform

| February 19, 2016

The credit card giant has launched its Visa Developer, providing access to some of its top transaction tech.

Visa has now announced that it has launched a new platform called Visa Developer, which provides access to some of the credit card giants most popular traditional and mobile payments services and technologies.

This new release provides access to a range of tech and services, and promises that more are coming soon.

This will include access to person-to person mobile payments capabilities, account holder identification, online payment services (like Visa Checkout), secure in-store payment services, as well as consumer transaction alerts and even currency conversions. The credit card company has confirmed that it will be opining up its payment capabilities access even more as 2016 progresses.

The Visa Developer platform for online and mobile payments has been in its beta phase for several months.

Visa launches mobile payments platformThere have been several companies that have come up with prototype mobile wallet apps based on the use of the Visa Developer platform. Among them have included: National Australia Bank, Emirates NBD, CIBC, Scotiabank, RBC, TD Bank, VenueNext, U.S. Bank, TSYS, and Capital One. This platform works by turning Visa’s various payment services and products into a mobile app programming interface (API).

Among the key features of the platform include:

• That it is a developer portal available around the world.
• It provides ways to search through the payment products and services at Visa.
• It offers sample code, documents, community interactions, reference apps, customer support, blogs and announcements.
• There is a testing sandbox through which a plug and play experience can be used by developers and to allow data to be tested by Visa.
• It is an open platform that allows hundreds of Visa SDKs and APIs to be accessed for some of the most popular products and capabilities the company has to offer.

Developers are able to use this platform to create online and mobile payments workflows such as push payments, peer-to-peer payments, merchant checkouts and even secure transactions through the use of tokenization. Mobile commerce, bill payments, and domestic/international remittance, among others, can also be created through Visa Developer.

Visa now owns a significant stake in Square mobile payments

| February 18, 2016

The credit card company recently purchased a considerable amount of the company ahead of its IPO.

Visa Inc. has now taken a considerable stake in the Square Inc. mobile payments company, through shares purchased ahead of the initial public offering (IPO) at Square, according to a Security and Exchange Commission regulatory filing.

The financial services and credit card giant had purchased 4.19 million Class B shares back in 2011.

Those Class B shares do not trade publicly. That said, Square has revealed in its filing that Visa has the right to translate 3.52 million of those Class Bs into Class A shares. Should Visa choose to take advantage of that option, it would hold a 10 percent share of the mobile payments company. That would be only slightly smaller than the current largest stakeholder, Capital Research and Management Co, which owns a 12.4 percent slice of the company. Capital Research and Management is a massive L.A.-based mutual fund company.

Square has been finding its experience as a publicly offered mobile payments business to be quite challenging.

Square and Visa - Mobile PaymentsThe company’s IPO was back in November, at $9 per share. During the first day of trading, it saw a rise of 45 percent. However, since that time, it has been gradually slipping downward.

Square offers a plastic “dongle” that attaches to mobile phones and tablets in order to make it possible to accept credit card payments. This makes it possible for small businesses, restaurants, tiny retailers, and sellers at arts and crafts festivals and farmer’s markets the opportunity to receive payments through credit card swipes and mobile technology. The CEO at Square is Jack Dorsey, who is also well known for being the chief exec at Twitter.

Square makes its money by charging a payment processing fee. Before the November 2015 IPO, Square had reported that it experienced $154 million in losses during 2014, on $850 million in revenues.

Mobile payments are an exceptionally rapidly growing business and are arriving in a number of different forms. While some allow mobile devices to be converted into a kind of portable point of sale terminal, others transform a smartphone into a wallet that can be used on the consumer-side.