More and more, consumers are paying for goods and services, and paying each other (P2P) digitally, but a strong and
growing preference for digital payments isn’t just a trend among consumers. Businesses are reimbursing customers
(B2C) and paying other businesses (B2B) digitally, marketplaces are paying their sellers (B2b) without cash, and
governments are embracing digital disbursements (G2C). All of this activity lends credence to our thesis that the
future of money is digital, and Visa is committed to powering this digital transformation.
While we always have our eyes on consumer payments, there is an even greater opportunity in new types of money
movement. Payments between peers, businesses, and governments represent a $185 trillion opportunity.
As much as $65 trillion of that opportunity is in lower value, higher velocity flows — the kind of flows that power
P2P payments, remittances, insurance, gig worker payouts and other payments — all possible with Visa Direct.
In the past, the Visa network was mainly a one-way street. Visa Direct, our home-grown payment solution for push
payments, turned that street into a highway system. It allows merchants to access cash flow daily, consumers to
receive payouts directly to their bank accounts, families to receive money from loved ones across borders, and
governments and businesses to quickly and securely pay each other.
In fiscal year 2021, Visa Direct alone facilitated multiple use cases across 500 partners on 16 card networks, 66
automated clearing house (ACH) schemes, seven real time payments networks and five gateways. This is what we refer
to as our network of networks capabilities. It enables Visa to serve as a single connection point for movement of
money around the world, utilizing the most effective routing to over five billion endpoints. This includes
Visa-owned networks, such as VisaNet, as well as those outside our own four walls, such as real time payment
networks and, in the future, emerging networks like central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiatives and public
blockchains.
This transition is truly remarkable. In the U.S. alone, nearly 120 million cards have sent or received funds using
Visa Direct. In fiscal year 2021, we continued to build out Visa Direct’s global reach, surpassing five billion
transactions. In terms of insurance disbursements, we added Nationwide to begin distributing claims to eligible
cards using Visa Direct. In the P2P cross-border space, we added Paysend. Soon, Western Union‘s U.S. customers will
be able to send funds to eligible Visa cards in the Philippines, Thailand, Colombia and Jamaica, followed by a
robust expansion into other countries.
In B2B payments — which represents $120 trillion of the $185 trillion opportunity in new flows — we continue to
focus on three main growth areas: card-based businesses; high value, low volume cross-border transactions and
domestic receivables and payables. We expanded Visa B2B Connect, our proprietary network built to make cross-border
B2B transactions cheaper and faster. We can now operate in more than 100 countries and territories, with more and
more banks joining the platform as we scale. We have also seen more issuers in the B2B card space in the form of
commercial cards, small business cards, T&E and purchasing cards, as well as virtual cards.