Visa launches interoperable payments with PayPal and Venmo

Visa is now partnering with financial services and payments companies to simplify the payments process for users.

The new interoperable peer-to-peer (P2P) payment offering allows customers to transfer money to other people across different payment services — that means someone will be able to send money on Venmo to someone receiving it through Western Union.

The latest buzzword on the fintech scene, interoperability sees the myriad of different systems and applications communicate with each other behind the scenes to remove friction for the user.

In this case, Visa is helping people pay and get paid more easily.

There are a number of big players in the payments space in the US, such as Venmo, PayPal and Cash App, all of which ease the payments process, but crucuailly only if you’re using the same service.

Even between Venmo and PayPal, both of which are owned by PayPal, users cannot currently make a direct payment.

With Visa+ though, users will no longer need to have the same app to send and receive money.

Using the new interoperable service, users can set up a ‘payname’ in their preferred app and share that with whoever they want to transact with.

Neither user will have to have a Visa card associated with their accounts, and Visa will act as the underlying link between the two services.

Customers also won’t have to share any personal information such as a phone number or email address, which, while not an issue for friends and family, will be helpful for one-off payments, e.g. for gig, creator and marketplace payouts.

In addition to Venmo and PayPal, Visa is partnering with Western Union, i2c, DailyPay and TabaPay. 

Notably, big players like Zelle and Cash App are missing from this initial group, but perhaps further interoperability will come with time, or even ahead of the launch.

Visa says it expects to launch the service for US consumers in late 2023, with general availability planned for mid-2024.