Visa Incorporated, a US-based payments company, recently announced it is expanding its pilot-testing of a system to enable payments in areas without a stable internet connection. Having completed a successful trial in five villages in the Indian state of Karnataka, Visa is partnering with Axis Bank, Innoviti Payment Solutions and Yes Bank to expand the availability of the technology. The system, which relies on the “chip of Visa debit, credit and prepaid cards,” enforces a cap of INR 200 (USD 2.70) per transaction and a daily limit of INR 2,000 (USD 27).
T R Ramachandran, Visa’s group country manager for India and South Asia, reportedly said “offline payments have the potential to catalyze digital payments usage even where internet connectivity is a challenge and failed transactions are a top concern. With this solution, Visa aims to work with our clients to see if this can scale with mass adoption.”
Visa partners with financial institutions to provide consumers with credit, debit and prepaid cards that can be used at merchants in 200 countries. Visa also offers payment and consulting services for commercial clients. As of July 2021, Visa reported total assets of USD 82 billion and total equity of USD 37 billion.
By Divya Deshmukh, Research Associate
Sources and Additional Resources
The TechCircle article
https://www.techcircle.in/2021/08/23/visa-executes-proof-of-concept-for-offline-payments-in-india
Visa homepage
https://www.visa.com/
Visa annual report
https://s1.q4cdn.com/050606653/files/doc_financials/2021/q3/Visa-Inc.-Q3-2021-Financial-Results.pdf
Axis Bank homepage
https://www.axisbank.com/
Innoviti Payment Solutions homepage
https://innoviti.com/
Yes Bank homepage
https://www.yesbank.in/
Previous MicroCapital article on Visa
https://www.microcapital.org/microcapital-brief-terrapay-visa-partner-to-boost-interoperability-digital-payments-remittances-financial-inclusion/
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