BBVA is developing additional features and products for its Open Platform service after integrating with Visa Direct to bring real-time payments onto the platform. 

The Birmingham, Ala.-based bank is slated to release cross-border payments and offer credit cards and digital credit lines to clients within six to 12 months, according to Susan French, head of product at BBVA Open Platform. The expansion plans come just days after BBVA integrated with the Visa Direct payments platform, enabling clients to transfer funds instantly to their accounts at BBVA via an API. The new functionality of Open Platform’s Move Money API will allow customers to transfer funds from Mastercard and Visa branded cards to their BBVA accounts in less than 15 minutes, French said. 

“We have seen that consumers have a strong preference for near real-time payments, so much so that they are willing to change their service provider,” French said, noting nearly 60% of people prefer real time payments, according to Visa research. 

Launched in 2018, Open Platform is a service BBVA uses to enable third-party clients to “embed banking and payment services on their platforms with the backing of an actual bank,” French said. The bank uses the platform to provide back-end banking for several fintech companies, including savings apps Digit and Simple.  

The bank also uses the platform to offer payment solutions to vendors. As the pandemic has pushed consumers to adapt to technology, BBVA is seeing an increase in digital transactions flowing through its platform. BBVA expects to see the transaction volume to grow 26% quarter-over-quarter in the first half of 2020. Customers want to have more “digital and real time payments, particularly when they’re receiving funds,” French said. Since the start of the pandemic, Open Platform has gained “several million API calls a month,” French said.  

The platform currently has 12 active users. Two of these are Wise and Tuvoli, apps that both use the Move Money API for instant transactions. Wise, a business banking app backed by BBVA, runs on the Open Platform API system, and the Tuvoli app allows customers to buy, sell and rent charter flights. Open Platform has more vendors in the pipeline, according to French.    

Also Read: BBVA USA reels in 50k new customers with Open Platform 

The Move Money API, which can be integrated with either B2B or B2C business models, helps small and medium sized businesses monitor cash flow closely, and supports numerous payment types, including ACH, digital bill pay and real-time push and pull payments to and from debit and prepaid cards through a single endpoint.  

“We are constantly evolving our products and platform for customer satisfaction,” French said. “Real time payment was a need of our customers, which we resolved through Visa Direct pay and Move Money API.” 

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