- Financial services company Visa announced the expansion of its popular Fast Track program to the U.S. to support fintechs
Financial services company Visa announced the expansion of its popular Fast Track program to the U.S. in order to continue its support for fintechs around the world with a goal of accelerating the growth of digital payments and creating better ways to move money everywhere.
Fast Track essentially aims to speed up the process of integrating with Visa in order to provide nimble startups with the ability to more easily leverage VisaNet — which is the company’s global payment network. Fast Track was made possible within the U.S due to Visa’s collaborations with leading companies who provide services across the payments spectrum ranging from card issuance to push payments integration to Payment Card Industry (PCI) Compliance along with Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) support.
Visa’s partners for this initiative include Alloy, BBVA Open Platform, Cross River Bank, Galileo, Green Dot, Marqeta, Netspend (TSYS’ Consumer Segment), Stripe, TabaPay, TSYS, Q2, and Very Good Security. And Visa DPS is also going to support certain partners’ participation in the program.
“In markets across the world, Visa has successfully rolled out the Fast Track program, linking arms with fintechs to provide a clear path towards getting to market, leveraging Visa’s scale, security, reach and strong network of partners,” said Terry Angelos — the SVP and Global Head of Fintech at Visa. “By launching Fast Track in the U.S., we are continuing our support for fintechs across the globe, with the goal of accelerating the growth of digital payments and creating better ways to move money everywhere.”
Last year, VC backed fintechs raised $39.6 billion from investors globally, which is up 120% from the previous year. As part of the launch of Fast Track in the U.S., Visa is also working with leading venture capital firms to automatically qualify their portfolio companies into the U.S. Fast Track program. And some of these partners include Andreessen Horowitz, Nyca Partners, Ribbit Capital, and Trinity Ventures.
“Speed is essential for fintech startups, particularly in the early stages. Easier access to the kind of infrastructure provided by Visa’s Fast Track program will help unlock massive amounts of innovation in the payments ecosystem,” added Schwark Satyavolu — a General Partner at Trinity Ventures. “We are looking forward to introducing our companies to Visa as they continue pushing forward digital innovation in the payments landscape.”
Visa’s Fast Track program is already available in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific. And it has successfully helped Visa propel the growth of the fintech industry around the world. Visa’s work with fintechs bolsters a number of the companies’ strategic business priorities such as Visa Direct, Visa Business Solutions (VBS), and Visa’s commitment to bringing digital payment options to the unbanked through social impact programs.
“We see many entrepreneurs with big ideas that can add real value and solve problems in the global payments system; the problem can be the difficulty of distribution and connectivity to the essential infrastructure,” noted John C. (“Hans”) Morris — a Managing Partner at Nyca Ventures. “Fast Track solves for this, enabling some of our best companies to start working with Visa right away.”
Fast Track is also one part of a broader Visa strategy to support fintechs’ growth and development globally. And in addition to Fast Track, Visa is consistently engaging with the fintech community through a variety of strategic initiatives and programs. These include partnership, investment, and ongoing engagement.
“Alloy is proud to share Visa’s mission of supporting the next generation of innovative fintech products and services as they get to market faster with the best identity, compliance and payments solutions in the market,” explained Laura Spiekerman — the co-founder and CRO of Alloy.
In terms of the partnerships, Visa collaborates with innovative fintechs to help them reach their growth and payment ambitions, with the backing of Visa’s speed, security, and scale across the globe.
“BBVA Open Platform is proud to be an enabler of fintech companies across the U.S., using our intuitive API platform to empower leading innovative companies to offer banking and payments services under their own brand,” commented Abhishek Gupta — the Head of BBVA Open Platform. “We’re thrilled to work with Visa to expand our mission of helping companies drive exponential growth and create more opportunities for consumers on top of better banking and payments services.”
Around the world, Visa collaborates with innovative fintechs to help them reach their growth potential with the backing of Visa’s speed, security, and scale. In the past year, Visa announced partnerships with multiple leading fintech companies such as Currencycloud, Flutterwave, ininal, N26, PayActiv, Rappi, Razer, and Remitly.
“Cross River is excited to partner with Visa to power the next generation of commerce,” Cross River founder, CEO and chairman Gilles Gade mentioned. “The combination of Cross River and Visa makes for a compelling proposition to provide innovative banking and payment solutions that transform financial services.”
Visa actively invests in companies that are leveraging cutting-edge technology to create new payment flows for the ecosystem. This past year, Visa invested in multiple leading fintechs worldwide such as Anchorage, Bankable, Branch, Finix, Minna Technologies, and PayMate.
“The simplicity of Galileo’s APIs gives global fintech leaders the ability to use our powerful technology platform to innovate in the banking and payments ecosystem,” Galileo CEO Clay Wilkes observed. “Now with Visa’s Fast Track program, we are making access to this capability faster. Gig economy companies, fintechs and any businesses with payment requirements can jump in to begin issuing payment credentials, with the confidence to grow and scale a profitable business.”
From an ongoing engagement aspect, Visa co-designed and funded the Inclusive Fintech 50 — which is a competition to make early-stage fintechs more visible to investors and others who can help them scale and reach more underserved people. And Visa also runs the Visa Everywhere Initiative, a global competition aimed at cultivating new relationships for the global startup community.
“We are thrilled to participate in Visa’s Fast Track program,” Green Dot Chief Revenue Officer Brett Narlinger acknowledged. “Visa has been a tremendous partner as we have scaled our Banking-as-a-Service offering, and we look forward to onboarding many new and innovative companies with our flexible API-driven technology platform, our large-scale program management operation and our highly capitalized integrated bank. We’ve found that Green Dot’s BaaS platform, with its proven scale and market-leading features, is a fast way for fintechs to launch new products, and we’re excited to make Green Dot BaaS available to even more companies through this partnership.”
Fintechs have been looking to change the way money works thus solving for friction that senders and receivers of payments experience day-to-day. And as one of the world’s original fintechs, Visa is committed to partnering with and supporting the next generation of payment innovators.
“Marqeta was founded with a mission to bring modern card issuing technology to a new generation of fintech innovators badly in need of open API solutions to help them better design products to get market and reach scale faster,” Marqeta founder and CEO Jason Gardner remarked. “Visa’s Fast Track Program is a DNA fit for us, and we applaud strongly a company of Visa’s scope and influence investing in up-and-coming entrepreneurs and technologies, especially at a time when the future of banking and payments is being constantly shaped and remade.”
Fintechs have been looking to change the way money works thus solving for friction that senders and receivers of payments experience day-to-day. And as one of the world’s original fintechs, Visa is committed to partnering with and supporting the next generation of payment innovators.
“As a Fintech ourselves, we are always looking to give back and support companies with innovative solutions to help fintechs get to market fast and scale,” says Manoj Verma — the co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Tabapay. “Our partnership with Visa through the Fast Track program only helps us deliver on this more.”
Today Visa is focused on helping fintechs bring to market new digital payment experiences across a broad spectrum of verticals including neo-banking and acceptance, new sectors across push payments like earned wage access, money management, and investments as well as lending.
“TSYS and Netspend, TSYS’ consumer segment, are pleased to partner with Visa to help establish potential relationships, and business opportunities, with new fintech companies that will push the limits of fintech innovation in the U.S.,” Netspend President and TSYS Senior Executive Vice President Kelley C. Knutson pointed out. “We have been influential leaders in the payments ecosystem, developing end-to-end innovative processing and payments solutions that bring convenience and control to people and businesses who value reliability, security and trust in their financial services partners. This makes partnering with organizations that also prioritize these same qualities a crucial part of the Fast Track program. We’re excited to work with Visa and help grow, and expand, our respective verticals and channels with emerging fintech companies.”
The VisaNet global processing network provides secure and reliable payments around the world and it is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second. And the company’s relentless focus on innovation is a catalyst for the rapid growth of digital commerce on any device for everyone.
“The Fintech Fast Track program highlights both Visa and Very Good Security’s commitment to help emerging fintechs get to market both rapidly and securely,” emphasized Mahmoud Abdelkader — the CEO and Co-Founder of VGS. “VGS is excited to team up with Visa to provide the foundational compliance and security infrastructure for the next generation of fintechs.”
