UK’s Banking Circle Gives Visa Access to Its Local Clearing Rails

Payments bank Banking Circle launched a partnership with Visa’s Visa Direct.

This collaboration lets Visa Direct access Banking Circle’s “extensive” local clearing rails around the world, thus strengthening Visa’s payment reach for its customers, the companies said in a Thursday (May 22) news release.

The arrangement lets Visa Direct use Banking Circle’s single API technology to access direct and local clearing rails via a “single, secure and trusted provider,” according to the release.

“Our partnership with Visa Direct represents an important milestone in our firm’s mission to increase speed, efficiency and reduce costs associated with cross-border transactions,” Banking Circle CEO Laust Bertelsen said in the release. “Partnering with a business of Visa Direct’s scale and stature as a payments industry leader reinforces the growth of Banking Circle’s capabilities and highlights the trust in, and significance of, our single API.”

In other cross-border payments news, there is an opportunity for processors to expand into new capabilities tied to cross-border commerce thanks to payment integration.

“Consumers demand simplicity and seamlessness in their everyday financial lives and the commerce experience,” PYMNTS reported April 30. “Consider the Starbucks app, a single point of integration that ties in everything from ordering one’s morning java, to paying for it, to redeeming loyalty rewards.”

Brandon Ferris, product lead at Thredd, told PYMNTS that more brands are looking for ways to control and enhance the end-user experience.

“[Brands] want things like a native wallet … and specifically within payments, you’re seeing the blurring of lines between debit or credit or money movement,” he said.

The challenge for payment processors is to expand the range of value-added services they provide to those client firms and find the right partners with which to team up as they allow for smooth money movement.

“What’s shifting is how clients think about their relationships with processors,” Ferris said, adding that “they are looking for a processor and partner who can do it all — they don’t want to be in a position where they have to go out and find five, seven or 10 different vendors. They want one set of APIs and an integrated experience. The processors are starting to capitalize on that customer need.”