Payments behemoth Visa has expanded its strategic collaboration with payments fintech Conferma Pay to improve its Visa Commercial Pay suite of B2B payment solutions.  

The offering allows financial institutions to improve the virtual payments strategies of its corporate customers, through a single, flexible connection, Gloria Colgan, senior vice president of Global Product Visa Commercial Solutions, told Bank Automation News.

Visa will help corporations issue, manage and make payments from virtual cards globally, Colgan said. 

“The global B2B payments space represents a significant opportunity for Visa and our partners to deliver on global high-value payments,” she said. “Currently, there is a need for FIs and their corporate clients to pay and be paid securely and efficiently, and at global scale — without needing to send high-value cross-border business payments through multiple banks.” 

Visa, the San Francisco-based company is emphasizing security when issuing virtual cards by making them single-use. “Since the virtual card details are unique and different from the user’s physical card, the risk of fraud or identity theft is greatly reduced,” Colgan said. 

Virtual cards can be deleted or disabled “instantaneously if they are lost or stolen,” she said. 

The extended collaboration between Visa and Conferma Pay enables the organizations to expand capabilities in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, where utilization is not as widespread as in North America, according to Colgan. 

Need for digital payments

Rob Anderson, partner at growth equity firm FTV Capital told BAN that “B2B payments [is] one of the last great frontiers of payments.”   

There is significant opportunity to automate “paper and manual-based processes” and companies are exploring options, he said, adding that “In the U.S. alone, nearly $10 trillion-plus” in payments are completed with checks, making the process costly, inefficient and slow. 

As e-commerce companies look to expand their ops in Latin America to serve its nearly 650 million residents, Anderson said, accepting and making payments digitally on payment rails different than the United States market is a pain point.