MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: TerraPay, Visa Partner to Boost Interoperability, Digital Payments, Remittances, Financial Inclusion

TerraPay, a digital payment firm headquartered in the Netherlands, recently partnered with Visa, a US-based payment technology company, to increase the accessibility of contactless and other digital payments, both domestic and cross-border. Otto Williams, Visa’s Head of Strategic Partnerships, Financial Technology (FinTech) and Ventures in Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said the partnership will “drive seamless and interoperable financial services and products to push much desired financial inclusion in our communities…”, and that “Interoperability is key to a digitally connected payments ecosystem…”.

Founded in 2015, TerraPay is a business-to-business, cross-border digital payment service that seeks to enable its clients’ customers to “send money to any mobile” phone. The company’s shareholders are Partech Partners; Prime Ventures; the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation; and the company’s founders, Ambar Sur, Ram Sundaram, Aniruddha Sane and Akbar Hussain. TerraPay’s technology is available to 1.2 million bank accounts and mobile wallets in 45 countries.

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 programs and consulting services for commercial clients. As of July 2019, Visa reported total assets of USD 69.9 billion and total equity of USD 34.3 billion.

By Andrew Janni, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Resources

Press release from TerraPay
https://www.terrapay.com/2020/06/23/visa/

TerraPay description
https://www.terrapay.com/about/

Visa homepage
https://visa.com/

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