SAN FRANCISCO -- With a new fast-growing segment of ‘Click-and-Mortar™, shoppers who rely on digital features to shop both online and in-store[1], merchants are managing complex technology as they work to provide consistent payment experiences. Visa (NYSE: V), a global leader in digital payments, is offering sellers expansive, simplified services to keep pace with those demands.

“The payments sector has made significant strides in simplifying the consumer shopping experience. In doing so, the payments ecosystem has become more complex and fragmented for sellers -- but it doesn’t have to be this way,” said Rob Cameron, Global Head of Acceptance Solutions, Visa. “Visa Acceptance Solutions allows businesses worldwide to offer their customers best-in-class payment options without over-indexing on complexity for themselves.”

Visa’s latest enhancements support merchants of all sizes with new and improved commerce experiences including:

· Improved access to and ease of integration with partners: Visa Acceptance Platform is debuting Developer Assist, an AI-powered tool to help partners develop sophisticated payment flows, answer questions on testing and certification and even suggest sample code. The platform, which is used by more than 450 payment service providers (PSPs), connects to over 100 independent software vendors (ISVs), bringing ease of use to over 450,000 active merchants each month across 160 countries using 50 different currencies[2].
· A reimagined small and medium-sized (SMB) business platform: Authorize.net has reimagined its user interface (UI), bringing data and streamlined day-to-day business operations to the forefront. The new UI has benefits for both partners and merchants across new dashboards, workspaces and smart search functionalities.
· Growing mobile acceptance, without additional hardware: Tap to Phone, which allows sellers to accept contactless payments using a certified smartphone, is now live in 121 countries with more than 6.7 million active terminals and more than $8.5 billion in payment volume on a 12-month basis[3]. Visa is also deploying contactless technology from Tap to Phone in new innovative ways, including the recent pilot in Latin America and the Caribbean that allows consumers to tap their cards to their own device in order to pay for online purchases.

“The past few years have had a profound and lasting impact on the commerce strategies for merchants of every shape and size. Consumers desire immediacy and increasingly expect digitally evolved experiences. To keep pace with this trend, merchants are now looking for partners to help them simplify their ability to maintain connectivity to the ecosystem,” said Jordan McKee, Research Director at S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research.

One Expansive Ecosystem to Open Possibilities for Connectivity

Visa Acceptance Solutions offers a level of connectivity and flexibility that businesses can’t build on their own without heavy technology investment, underscoring the importance of integrating digital and physical retail. As a part of Visa’s value-added services, cloud-ready solutions like the Visa Acceptance Platform and Visa’s Tap to Phone payment solution have helped clients scale their businesses and tailor their payment systems to meet consumer needs.