Visa opens its platform to software developers

Rolls out Visa Developer where developers get access to payment technologies and other services of the company

In a first in the company’s 60-year history, and reflecting the change in payment and banking industry due to technology, Visa rolled out Visa Developer platform that lets developers access to payments technology, products and services by Visa. The company’s Bengaluru-based technology development centre played a key role in the Visa Developer programme.

“The team in Bangalore helped built the underlying platform for Visa Developer that gives developers all over the world access to Visa APIs, a testing sandbox and test data” said T R Ramachandran, goup country manager, India and South Asia, Visa. Visa’s technology centre in Bengaluru at present has 700 employees.

The new platform will offer access to some of Visa's most popular payment technologies and services including account holder identification, person-to-person payment capabilities, secure in-store and online payment services such as Visa Checkout, currency conversion and consumer transaction alerts. The company plans to provide access to more of its payment capabilities over the next year.

The platform is also designed to help financial institutions, merchants, and technology companies meet the demands of consumers and merchants, who increasingly rely on connected devices to shop, pay and get paid.

Ramachandran further added that in the recent times, there has been a seismic shift in the way consumers consume content, shop, pay, and manage their money - driven primarily by the ubiquity in connected devices. This has necessitated players like Visa to open up its platform. “As a global leader in payments technology, it is imperative that we enable our clients to meet consumer demand, and help them keep up with the pace of innovation in digital commerce, thereby creating new digital experiences for consumers,” he added.

Analysts feel that the move from Visa to open up its platform for the developers makes it more than just a payment network provider. “The recent launch of Visa's Developer platform marks a significant shift for the global payments network, and indeed the broader digital payments space. Visa is opening up its full capabilities directly to the broader digital ecosystem, while cementing its place in the future of payments. 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," said Gilles Ubaghs, Senior Analyst, Financial Services Technology.

The creation of the Visa Developer platform has been a multi-year initiative led by Visa's global product and technology teams. The team is transforming Visa's payment products and services into application programming interfaces (APIs), standard technology used by developers for building software and applications.

Over the past few months, leading financial institutions, technology companies, and start-ups have participated in beta trials of the new Visa Developer platform and many have already created prototype applications using Visa technology, said the company in a press statement.

"We are unbundling Visa's full suite of products and services and giving developers open access to the underlying payment capabilities," said Rajat Taneja, executive vice-president of technology, Visa in a press 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. When you add the ability to distribute those new experiences across Visa's global network, you can see why Visa Developer will become the preferred playground for developers everywhere."

Ramachandran further added that Visa’s vision is to create an open marketplace where developers can publish their own digital commerce and payments application, download examples of what others have built and partner with financial institutions and merchants to bring solutions to market.