Visa Money Transfer service gains global adoption

Visa Money Transfer makes it easier and more secure for people in Europe, the Middle East and Asia to send and receive funds.

Visa Money Transfer, a card-based service enabling a Visa cardholder to send funds conveniently and securely to another Visa cardholder, debuted in Ukraine in 2003 and launched in Egypt in 2004.

Since then, the service has been extended to millions of people who no longer need to wait at a money transfer agent's office, but instead can use the convenience and security of their 16-digit Visa account number to send and receive money.

Depending on their issuing bank, they can execute the transfer at a bank branch, using the internet, via an ATM or via mobile phone.

"Visa's growth has been the result of an unwavering commitment to finding innovative ways to use our network and products to make payments more secure and more convenient,"

said Tarek Elhousseiny, Visa's General Manager for North and West Africa.

Elhousseiny added, "Our approach to person-to-person payments and remittances is to use our global technology to create tailored solutions for various countries and apply what we've learned to expand the service worldwide."

The demand for money transfer includes domestic remittances, person-to-person payments and remittances by expatriate workers who continue to have commitments in their home countries. In addition to cardholder convenience, money transfer programs enable financial institutions to better meet the needs of their existing customers.

Since 2003, a total of 46 Visa Money Transfer programs have been rolled out in around the world including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, France, Georgia, Greece, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Malaysia, Morocco, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine. While the Asia Pacific region is leading the deployment of new Visa Money Transfer programs, significant momentum has been gained in Central Europe and the Middle East.

Visa's goal is to utilize its global processing platform and payments network to make money transfer between the 1.6 billion Visa cards around the world safe, convenient and reliable. To this end, Visa is continually enhancing existing programs and developing new services.
Work underway includes technology infrastructure improvements to support global processing of card-based remittances, and to open new channels through which remittances can be sent and received, including through financial institution branches, the internet, mobile devices and Visa's global ATM network.