Visa to Fast Track Digital Acceptance for Small Businesses in Asia Pacific

06/02/2022

New partner program to help small businesses in Asia Pacific accept digital payments in minutes

 

Small businesses are the backbone of economies across Asia Pacific, making up over 90% of all businesses and providing more than 60% of jobs.1As the world has shifted further to digital across all aspects of commerce, small businesses (SMBs) have had to adapt, from selling online, digitising their supply chain and vendor payments, and accepting digital payments from customers. According to the 2022 Visa Hong Kong Back to Business Study, 97 percent of small businesses surveyed with a digital presence, attributed their pandemic survival to e-commerce.2

To accelerate the digital growth of small businesses in Asia Pacific, Visa is announcing the launch of the Acceptance Fast Track Program. Under the new program, small businesses will be able to begin accepting digital payments in a matter of minutes, thanks to new Visa solutions, onboarding processes and program participants (acquirers and payment facilitators).

“Small businesses in Asia Pacific have often been ahead of the curve when it comes to embracing new technology,” said Neil Mumm, Head of Merchant Sales & Acquiring, Visa, Asia Pacific. “Over the past two years we’ve seen that trend accelerate across every facet of running a business, from a bicycle shop in Vietnam to pop-up stores and street vendors in Hong Kong, all enabling cashless payments. While SMBs are grappling with so much change, we want payments to be the easy part. That’s why, together with our partners, we’re making it faster and simpler to get plugged into Visa’s global network.”
 

Who can participate?
The Acceptance Fast Track Program, open to payment facilitators and acquirers across the region, will help small businesses provide digital payment options through a holistic set of tools targeted at serving the SMB segment.

 

How will faster digitisation help?

  • Enabling digital payments with Visa will help small businesses boost revenue and increase efficiency
  • Customers can enjoy a seamless checkout experience and be assured of safe, reliable transactions
  • Based on our observations, paying digitally results in sticky customers. For example, tapping to pay drives nearly 4x more transactions and nearly 2x higher spend than non tap-to-pay, and most of the increase comes from habitual everyday spend categories like grocery, convenience stores and transit3

 

What’s new for small businesses?
Partnering with Visa and participating enablers, program participants will be able to onboard small businesses by providing:

  • Access to new acceptance solutions from Visa, like the Tap to Phone terminals in Asia Pacific that turn merchants’ smartphones to payment acceptance devices
  • eCommerce payment capabilities for merchants and small businesses
  • Contactless payment acceptance capabilities
  • Improved time to enablement via the underwriting and merchant credit scoring tools like Visa’s Rapid Seller Onboarding that are being deployed by Visa partners

 

What’s new for acceptance enablers?
The Acceptance Fast Track program will provide acceptance enablers like acquirers and payment facilitators with support including:

  • Special rebates for deploying new acceptance solutions such as Tap to Phone, Rapid Seller Onboarding and dispute resolution solution Verifi
  • Tools to track merchant onboarding
  • Access to a payments hub with specially curated resources
  • Dedicated Visa support

 

Launch Partners
Current partners on the Acceptance Fast Track program include:

  • YedPay: payments solutions provider in Hong Kong
  • Allinpay: FinTech company providing integrated payment solutions in Singapore
  • Ambank: financial services group in Malaysia
  • eGHL: online payment gateway operating in Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Australia
  • NextPay: leading payment facilitator in Vietnam
  • OxPay: integrated payments solution provider in Singapore
  • PayMongo: online payment processor in the Philippines
  • WebXPay: online payment gateway in Sri Lanka

 

Payment facilitators and acquirers can express their interest to join the Acceptance Fast Track Program here.

 

1 April 2021 - How Can Asia Reignite Its SME Growth Engine through Trade?  

2  Going digital key to small business success

3 Visa Investor Day 2020

 

About Visa

Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.