Visa’s V.me Digital Wallet Lands Another Bank Partner: U.S. Bank

Visa, delivering on its promise of greater issuer support for its V.me digital wallet, announced U.S. Bank as its latest partner.

Visa announced its first partner, PNC Bank, last week, and the card network says it has over a dozen issuer partners lined up. Visa’s digital wallet is designed for online shopping, allowing consumers to make e-commerce purchases by typing just an email address and a password.

“V.me presents a new service for our customers that addresses the growing consumer desire to shop online from any device with ease and simplicity,” said Clifford Cook, chief marketing officer for U.S. Bank Retail Payment Solutions, in a press release Oct. 23.

Visa’s issuer partners help enroll consumers in the service. For example, issuers could make V.me an option when signing up new accounts or present it as an option to existing customers within online banking.

Issuers may present their own cards as funding options when users enroll with V.me, but Visa does not restrict payment options by issuer or card network — consumers may also enroll cards from MasterCard, American Express and Discover Financial Services.

Visa announced V.me last year and has been testing the system with a small group of merchants. It had twenty-three merchant partners as of last week, including 1-800-Flowers.com, Shoebuy.com and Rakuten Buy.com.

Visa designed its digital wallet to be issuer-friendly. V.me is not a stored-value account or a virtual card, so it is able to pass along the full transaction data a bank would expect from a normal card payment, even if the payment were funded from a non-Visa card.

“Visa and U.S. Bank have a close relationship dating back many years, making U.S. Bank a critical part of our go-to-market strategy for V.me,” Jennifer Schulz, Visa’s global head of e-commerce, said in the release.