Visa Launches Developer Platform To Share Payments Technology

After spending decades keeping its payment technologies behind closed doors, Visa has flung open the gates to welcome external developers to use its application programming interfaces (APIs). The new Visa Developer platform will allow banks, merchants and tech companies to take advantage of the vendor’s payment technologies and weave them into their own software and apps. Here are the details.

A number of companies around the world had already beta tested the Visa Developer platform. One of them was the National Australia Bank (NAB), which used the platform for its NAB Pay digital wallet offering. At launch, the platform will give developers access to Visa’s most popular APIs and services including:

  • Account holder identification
  • Person-to-person payment capabilities
  • Secure in-store and online payment services like Visa Checkout
  • Currency conversion
  • Consumer transaction alerts

“We are unbundling Visa’s full suite of products and services and giving developers open access to the underlying payment capabilities,” said Visa executive vice-president of technology Rajat Taneja said in a statement. “We believe this will lead to the creation of entirely new commerce experiences with Visa technology integrated to enable greater security, scale and convenience when it comes time to pay.”

So what has motivated Visa to open up to third-party developers using its technology? According to analyst firm Ovum:

“While many legacy bank players have been hesitant to see Visa as primarily a technology company, rather than a network provider, Visa Developer will significantly extend its reach to app developers of all varieties, from startups through to technology giants.”

Visa has been facing some stiff competition with the rise of payment providers like Stripe and Braintree entering the scene. The Visa Developer Platform is a big step for the company to stay relevant in the payments industry.

You can find out more about the Visa Developer platform over at the official website.


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