Cross-border payments firm Thunes is expanding its partnership with Visa into Asia and Africa.
In brief:
- The new collaboration will see Visa tap into Thunes’ network to send payments to over 108 digital wallet types and bank accounts throughout countries that include Kenya, the Philippines, Indonesia and Pakistan.
- Thunes will also implement Visa Direct’s push-to-card capability, to allow for payouts made to eligible Visa cards and accounts across more than 190 countries and territories.
- The release notes the collaboration follows Visa and Thunes’ initial team-up in October 2022 to extend Visa Direct’s reach to 1.5bn digital wallets. In addition, Visa invested in Thunes’ $60mn Series C extension round in July of last year.
What does this mean?
“Payment networks such as Visa and Mastercard are uniquely positioned to underpin the pivot toward better cross-border fund flows,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year. “Their networks have already scaled, and their endpoints and acceptance points already number in the billions.”
