News

Visa, Planet Payment team up for ATM activation in Myanmar

March 18, 2013

Visa has announced the opening of the Myanmar market to ATM and POS acceptance through licensing agreements with Co-operative Bank, Kanbawza Bank, and Myanmar Overseas Bank. The company is partnering with Planet Payment to provide necessary core technology and operating systems. 

After being shut out of the global financial system by international sanctions, Myanmar had no ATM or bankcard service for eight years. Following government reforms and loosening of sanctions, the Myanmar financial system is looking to catch up quickly with global payment networks and standards.

According to a news release from Planet Payment, Visa bank partners in Myanmar have now subscribed to a Visa solution that allows them to quickly activate their systems to support the needs of business travellers and tourists.

"Working with each bank we were able to deliver the processing solutions needed to operate their ATM and merchant acquiring systems through a Visa managed service," said Phillip Kumnick, head of global acquirer processing at Visa. "Our service now connects the Myanmar banks' ATMs and POS machines to Visa managed services, and manages the complexities of cross border processing acquiring services."

"Planet Payment's single proprietary processing platform enables the delivery of payment solutions that can be tailored quickly to meet the requirements of a particular market," said Philip Beck, chairman and CEO of Planet Payment. "We are very excited to be working together in Myanmar and we continue to work together on opportunities to deliver innovative payment solutions to banks, merchants and consumers in other developing economies."

As a result of the recent success in Myanmar, Visa and Planet Payment are working on opportunities to target the deployment of the managed service to additional developing markets in support of traditional ATM and POS acceptance as well as developing support for mobile point of sale.

Read more about transaction processing.