Visa extends money-transfer service to Indonesia, Singapore

Visa Money Transfer, a card-based service that allows a Visa cardholder to send funds to another Visa cardholder, debuted in Ukraine in 2003. Since then, the service has been extended to allow users transfer funds using their 16-digit Visa account numbers, rather than through a money-transfer office.

 

Depending on their issuing bank, transactions can be executed at a bank branch, over the Internet, or at an ATM or self-service kiosk.

"Visa's growth has been the result of an unwavering commitment to finding innovative ways to use our network and products to make payments more secure and more convenient," said Elizabeth Buse, Visa's global head of products. "Our approach to person-to-person payments and remittances is to use our global technology to create tailored solutions for various countries and apply what we've learned to expand the service worldwide."

The demand for money transfer includes domestic remittances, person-to-person payments and remittances by expatriate workers who continue to have commitments in their home countries.

 

The World Bank reports that workers' remittances around the world were U.S. $240 billion in 2007. In addition to cardholder convenience, money transfer programs enable financial institutions to better meet the needs of their existing customers.