Payment platform Astra announced today that it will partner with Visa to enable faster funding to new accounts and allow users to move funds across accounts in real time with the Visa Direct money movement platform.

Visa joins Plaid, Lithic, Unit, Rize and MX in partnering with Astra to fuel quicker transactions.

The connection between Visa and Astra was facilitated through Fort Lee, N.J.-based Cross River Bank, which has worked alongside fintech partners such as Finix Payments, which handles payment processing for software platforms.

As the need for real-time payments grows, the three-to-four-day window required to set up and fund a new account has become a pain point for customers. Through San Francisco-based Astra’s API, users conduct immediate or real time transactions across Visa Direct’s rails onto a card of their choice, allowing for instant settlement of funds.

“Every consumer out there has essentially been exposed to the instant settlement mechanism, and therefore every fintech that was already having challenges with settlement speed before this now has a higher bar that for serving those customers and getting funds to be in that account as soon as possible,” Astra chief executive Gil Akos told Bank Automation News.

Through the instant funding capability, customers can now reload a card with funds with instant settlement and set thresholds as to when their cards will be automatically reloaded if the account falls below a predetermined amount, Akos said.

The partnership is set for 37 companies to operate as customers for Astra, with 23 having already gone live and the others to be added each quarter, Akos said.

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