- Key insight: Visa is collaborating with fintech PingPong to support international business payments, including cases in which one party does not use credit cards.
- What's at stake: The partnership, one of several that Visa has built, enables the card brand to broaden its reach among corporate clients.
- Forward look: The deals also help Visa boost its value-added services strategy, an important factor for investors that follow the card network.
Visa's partnership strategy has extended to fintechs that enable international business payments where both parties don't necessarily use cards.
The card network's latest deal is with cross-border payments fintech PingPong to release a card-to-account payment service through Visa's Business Payment Solution Provider, or BPSP, service.
This enables international startups and businesses to settle supplier invoices using existing commercial credit cards issued by Visa, even in cases where the supplier does not directly accept card payments.
The BPSP service converts the payment from the buyer's preferred transaction method (in this case a credit card) to the seller's preferred method.
In practice, a corporate buyer can pay suppliers with a Visa credit card through its BPSP, which converts the card transaction to the seller's preferred payment method, such as a traditional wire transfer. The buyer then settles the transaction with Visa via their regular commercial credit card payments at a later date.
The partnership serves Visa Europe and the card provider's commercial clients in that region.
"Businesses need more flexibility in how and when they pay," said Lucy Demery, head of commercial solutions for Visa Europe. "Through our partnership with PingPong, we're extending the value of commercial card rails beyond traditional acceptance, enabling secure payments and improving working capital for buyers and suppliers."
PingPong is one of three fintech providers chosen by Visa for its BPSP program, according to a company statement. The fintech's infrastructure supports payments to suppliers in approximately 170 countries with around 25 different currencies.
"Most B2B suppliers don't accept cards, which leaves a vast portion of corporate spend stranded outside the most efficient working capital tool businesses already hold," David Messenger, CEO of global businesses at PingPong, said in a statement. "Partnering with Visa to bring this to market reflects the standard of compliance, capital safeguards and global reach that serious commercial card programs now demand."
Visa has partnered with fintechs for international business payments in the past as well. The card network
This expansion in Visa's value-added services, or VAS, comes as the company reported its strongest quarterly revenue growth since 2022 in its
"VAS [value-added services] is cruising," a William Blair analyst note said in response to Visa's recent earnings report. "Similar to agentic and stablecoins, we argue that investors will begin viewing VAS as Visa on the front foot, offering solutions to open-closed networks, secure agentic transactions, support open banking and enable fintech product road maps. We think 27% second-quarter VAS revenue growth underpins this outlook, and we highlight VAS and pricing as two tailwinds supporting an outlook for steady yield accretion."
