Summary
Visa Direct is a global money movement platform that simplifies collecting, holding, converting, and sending funds. Using Visa's own digital payments network and infrastructure, along with networks of acquired companies like Earthport, and CurrencyCloud, the Visa Direct Platform delivers global money-movement capabilities. With real-time payouts across 195+ countries in 160 currencies, and multiple collection currencies, the platform provides flexible payment solutions for diverse business needs of financial institutions, Acquirers, fintechs, businesses, and governments.
Introduction
Visa’s categories its business into three broad verticals:
- Consumer Payments:
- Consumer payments broadly is all the ways consumers are using Visa networks to buy and pay for goods and services. This includes card rails and account rails (through open banking acquisition)
- New Flows
- This is divided further into 2 categories:
- Visa Commercial Services (VCS)
- This includes all the business cards value proposition products on the Visa portfolio which includes corporate cards, expense management, payables automation etc.
- Visa Direct:
- This is consumer and business money movement solution and I will explain this in detail
- Value Added Services
- Further classified into 4 verticals:
- Issuing solutions - For banks
- Acceptance solutions - for acquirers, PSPs, ISVs etc
- Risk solutions - For both sides of the ecosystem
- Advisory solutions - Client consulting and advisory
What is Visa Direct?
As explained above, Visa Direct falls under the New Flows business vertical. Visa Direct defines money movement as the ability to Collect, Convert, Hold and Send money. All of these capabilities / functions are money being moved - i.e - being used for everything that is not an “active purchase” of goods and services.
Over time, Visa has acquired different businesses, which provide each of these capabilities. So let’s discuss each of these capabilities.
In the money movement business under Visa Direct- there are 3 underlying networks which are powering each of these capabilities.
Earthport - This acquisition provides connections to accounts all over the world. This capability connects to local bank rails like domestic ACHs, RTGS, and other bank rails like SEPA. Some of these rails are real-time networks, which makes cross-border transfers instantly.
CurrencyCloud - CurrencyCloud network allows creation of virtual multi-currency accounts. What this means for the CurrencyCloud customers that they can offer their users the ability to hold multiple currencies in virtual accounts. These accounts also have virtual IBANs or local account numbers, which allow to transfer money domestically through bank rails, as you would if you had an actual bank account in that currency. CurrencyCloud also has connections to some local bank rails as well. So they have some overlaps with earthport when it comes to sending money to bank accounts.
VisaNet - Visa’s core capability connecting acquirers and banks, which powers any card transaction, can also serve as money movement network. 16 digit card number can serve as an endpoint to receive money. Just like an account number, a card credential can be used to receive money.
Lets discuss the money movement capabilities in a little more detail.
- Collect
- Collections is defined as the ability of a consumer to add or receive funds to an “account”. This broadly means two things:
- Add funds to any account using your card. Ex: When you have a Digital Wallet, ex. Revolut - and you add money in your Revolut account using a Visa card.
- Collect money through virtual accounts:
- A lot of fintechs today provide the capability of giving users access to multi-currency “virtual” accounts. Which means I can have accounts in multiple currencies which give me a local bank account number and other details, and allow me to collect money in that currency - irrespective of where I am located.
- Convert
- This is simple - convert your money into any currency - whether it is within your “wallet” or whether you are sending money
- This service is also offered to FX providers / brokers - ex: Where you (consumers) buy cash Thai Baht for your upcoming Thailand trip.
- Hold
- This is the capability of having multi-currency wallets within the same environment. Fintechs and Banks are now offering their users to have multiple-currencies in the same account, which can then be used to spend on the same card credential. This holding capability is what allows users to move their money from one currency account to other seamlessly.
- This also means that clients can hold different currency pools through accounts and use them for settlement / payouts
- Send
- This is one of the main pillars of the 4 capabilities. This capability, as the name suggests, allows Businesses, consumers, and even governments to send money to different “endpoints”. But what is an endpoint?
- Cards: The 16 digit card number can be used to send money. Just in the way you can receive money by sharing your bank account number, cards can be used to receive money. Some use cases include: Remittances, Refunds, Lottery or Gambling payouts etc
- Accounts: Bank accounts as endpoints. Pretty standard. This is powered through both CurrencyCloud and Earthport.
- Wallets: With the rise of digital wallets like Grab, WeChat, Paytm, Visa Direct gives access to some of the biggest digital wallets in the world. So by using the digital wallet user ID, users can send money to these wallets through the Visa Direct platform.
Use cases and potential applications
As Visa defines this vertical as “New Flows” - there are a wide ranging possibilities and diverse application for all industries where money is being moved. And all of such flows are demanding real-time or instant payments.
We will consider different payment flows for simplicity, and identify the use cases for each of them.
- P2P / C2C (Peer to Peer / Consumer to Consumer)
- As the name suggests, this payment flow indicates whether money is being moved from a consumer to her own different account or when one person is sending money to someone else.
- Movement to own account: People have accounts with multiple different providers. Apart from multiple bank accounts, there are wallets, platforms for trading stocks etc. So topping up a wallet, or adding money to an account all counts as money movement and you can use different methods to do that. Using a bank accounts or cards. Crypto On ramps are also examples of such money movement.
- Movement to someone else’s account: Pretty obvious, sending money either locally or cross-border. Simple as it may sound, moving money globally for P2P (or Remittances) is a very complicated, expensive and very regulated process. It is an industry on its own with fierce competition to improve the process of moving money globally.
- This vertical also includes the use cases having multi-currency wallets and virtual accounts which enable these type of flows seamlessly.
- B2C (Business to Consumer)
- Pretty straightforward to understand, but this encompasses a wide range of applicability across industries. So everytime a business is sending money to a consumer, this would be a money movement flow. Some illustrative examples:
- Wages and Salaries: With the rise of freelancing and platforms reaching global talent, payment of wages and salaries isn’t as seamless as it should be. With currency conversion involved, users and business both want to ensure this money movement is transparent, and not expensive. Earned Wage Access (EWA), also known as salary advances, are also common use cases that are gaining prevalence.
- Withdrawals and Payouts: This use case covers money moved from a wallet or a platform back to the consumer. Examples include Stocks and shares payouts, crypto payouts, Lottery and Gambling winnings.
- Insurance covers and claims: For any kind of cash covers, insurance payouts are a way for companies to settle claims with users very quickly.
- Refunds: Pretty straightforward. As a consumer, you now have various methods of asking for a refund. With commerce becoming cross-border, refunds are complicated when money needs to go back to the consumer, and the business facing FX risk.
- VAT refunds: A use case that is pretty common in the Europe and Singapore (popular shopping destinations). It is not a refund on the goods you bought, but the tax you paid in that country. Since this is always a cross border transaction, this has its own processes and regulations to be followed. It is an industry on its own, with millions of dollars of tax refunds flowing to consumers each year.
- Verticals such as Content creation, Gig Economy, Gaming, Web Advertising Payouts, are examples where Visa Direct and its competitors are finding increasing applications.
- G2C (Government to Consumer)
- This payout has applications in use cases such as:
- Pension payouts - In particular, cross-border payouts for citizens who are no more residing in the same country
- Income Tax refunds and Rebates: Each year, due to accounting and calculation errors, there is almost always a tax surplus or deficit for consumers. In teh case of surplus, the government needs to return this money to consumers in a fast, seamless way.
- Financial Aid / Social Inclusion: For unbanked, or people who are left out of the financial systems, or people who are unable to access such services, government and NGOs work together so that such inclusion initiatives reach the intended audience. An example is a pre-paid card that can only be used for food, for the homeless and refugee migrants.
- B2B (Business to Business)
- This is a incredibly broad vertical. In fact, Visa Commercial Services (intro above) is specifically focussed on this vertical. But business come in all shapes and sizes. For individual run businesses like a baker, or a coffee shop or an online T-shirt store, the lines between individuals and business blur, and money is moved interchangeably.
- Some illustrative examples:
- Accounts Payables and Receivables
- Settlement payouts - with acquiring banks
- Supplier payments
In these 4 broad verticals, there are fairly big overlaps, and companies often operate in more than one business. This further creates variables in the payment ecosystem, and hence creating space for both innovation and optimisation.
Conclusion
Money movement is a fairly recent category. And different players, including Visa, is trying to capture the vast opportunity size that money movement offers. As in the Visa Investor Presentation from 2025, the payment volume in Commercial and Money Movement is over $200T. Visa Direct is one of the major leaders and competitors for this really massive opportunity and is incredibly well positioned to serve banks, financial institutions, acquirers, governments and businesses in this dynamic and ever-changing landscape.
