Innovation

Gig economy workers can get paid faster with the power of push

Visa and NetSuite use Visa Direct to improve small business and consumer disbursements

 

Nearly 150 years after money was first moved by wire transfer using the telegraph, money still travels relatively slowly—a surprise given all the innovation that surrounds it. Waiting on a funds transfer or a check in the mail is hardly convenient in today’s “on-demand economy,” where one in three workers is a solo entrepreneur or independent contractor. That’s why Visa is creating a pilot program with Oracle NetSuite for a number of participating treasury banks to enable their clients to offer fast payouts using Visa Direct, Visa’s real-time[1] push payments solution.

Visa Direct allows funds to be delivered safely, quickly and conveniently via so-called “push payments.” Visa Direct reverses the direction of a transaction on the Visa network, “pushing” money to accounts using eligible debit cards instead of using more cumbersome methods like Automated Clearing House (ACH electronic payments) and check. Visa Direct is already used by companies like Postmates and PayActiv to help millions of gig economy workers get paid quickly and conveniently.

It’s all in the app
To make this possible, Visa is creating a "Built for NetSuite" app called Card Payouts. Built using SuiteCloud, a  comprehensive set of cloud development tools provided by NetSuite, the new SuiteApp will help mid-to-large-size businesses more efficiently manage business process and cash flow with the integration of Visa Direct through their participating treasury bank. This is important as businesses using enterprise resource planning (ERP) software like NetSuite are looking for efficiencies that help automate back-office functions. In fact, according to a recent study, 88 percent of organizations identified increasing efficiencies as the primary reason to switch to electronic payments[2].

Visa is addressing this opportunity by creating a card-based front end user experience for treasury banks that integrates with their existing infrastructure and complements NetSuite’s Banking as a Service program. Visa Direct not only helps expedite payments, but also combines Visa’s deep experience in risk authentication and fraud mitigation with the reliability of VisaNet to keep payments safe and secure.

This new application is being built to help provide an improved option for enterprises to track and pay bills. The pilot is focused on treasury banks particularly interested in contractor payouts and out-of-pocket expense reimbursements that can be sent directly to a recipient’s eligible debit card.

“Millions of gig economy workers wait long periods of time to get paid, with transfers often taking multiple days to get completed,” said Scott Derksen, senior director, Business Development, NetSuite. “With Visa Direct and the new Card Payouts app, we are supporting a solution to mobilize treasury bank activities for card payouts and meet the ‘need it now’ expectations of our industry.”

How it works
Treasury banks participating in the pilot will be able to enable their business clients to download the Card Payouts app from the NetSuite SuiteApp store once the app is available. The app is built to support card capture, tokenization and card-on-file transactions.

Visa will begin rolling out the pilot program with participating treasury banks in Fall 2019. Learn more about Visa Direct. 

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[1] Actual fund availability depends on receiving financial institution and region. Visa requires fast-funds enabled issuers to make funds available to their recipient cardholders within a maximum of 30 minutes of approving the transaction. Please refer to the Visa Direct team for more information.

[2] 2015 Payments Cost Benchmarking Survey, The Association for Financial Professionals (2015)

Tag: Payment Security Tag: Payment technology

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