Visa Developer Community

Symon Perriman plans to integrate Visa Checkout in FanWide, a digital platform for sports fan clubs.   Growing up, Symon Perriman moved around a lot and like many sports fans, he was often living away from his favorite teams’ hometown. As Symon moved for college and work brought him to new cities, he used sports as way to connect to the city and develop new friendships. It was through hosting and attending his local alumni game watch parties where he began to meet friends with similar interests.   For nearly a decade, he put these watch parties on but kept experiencing the same frustrations around unprepared venues or lack of communication channels to socialize the games to true fans. And that is how FanWide was born.     We are excited to introduce you to Symon who will be working with the Visa Developer Platform to enhance the FanWide platform and bring more services to its users. We caught up with Symon as he gets ready to integrate Visa Checkout.   Tell us a little bit about yourself.    I’m Symon Perriman , a 33 year-old tech entrepreneur living in Seattle.  I was born in England and my family immigrated to the United States when I was nine.  I grew up in New Jersey, then went to college at Duke, where I earned degrees in Computer Science, Economics, and Digital Media.  I was recruited out of college by Microsoft, which brought me to Seattle where I have been living since, and where I met my wife.  I spent eight years at Microsoft, splitting my time as an engineer building their cloud platform, and as a technical evangelist, promoting their cloud and datacenter solutions.    Working for an established company was a great way to launch my career, but I have always been an entrepreneur at heart, and so I ran my own consulting company on the side and built around a hundred mobile apps and websites for clients.  In 2015 I joined a Microsoft partner, 5nine Software, as their VP of Business Development and Marketing, then launched FanWide in 2016 and have been running it fulltime since.  Throughout my life I’ve lived in over a dozen cities and traveled to over fifty countries, so I’ve always used sports to connect with people and find a community wherever I visited, which is what inspired me to create FanWide.   What is FanWide?   FanWide is a free digital platform for fan clubs which helps displaced sports fans find a local game watch party at a sports bar for any team in any city, using the world's largest fan club database.  Millions of out-of-market fans can use FanWide to find the closest community event for their favorite team and check in for rewards, wherever they are living or traveling.  Sports bars use FanWide to find new customers and promote their events – over half a million in the past year! Fan clubs and alumni associations use FanWide's digital platform to expand their network, organize events, communicate with local fans, collect and report attendance data, enter contests, collect donations, and activate food or drink discounts from the event host or team sponsors.     Sports teams and leagues, as well as athletes and influencers, can use FanWide's Sports Data Platform to grow their audience, analyze fan engagement, and develop new fan clubs, and all of FanWide’s services can be integrated within the team’s website or app. FanWide also offers sponsors a new targeted marketing channel through its digital platform, and on-site activations during thousands of in-person events which function like a "virtual stadium", allowing sponsors to engage any team’s most loyal fans in any city.  FanWide's network allows teams and brands to offer merchandise, game tickets, and other digital or physical goods to these fan clubs. Long-term FanWide wants to provide the world's leading platform to automatically connect hosts and fans of any interest group, including esports, gaming, TV shows, politics, trivia and more.   What inspired the idea for FanWide?   I have always found that sports are a great way to connect people, as they transcend language, gender, nationality, and ethnicity.  My father was in the military, so my family was constantly moving around, and I found that sports were a great way to make new friends.  When we immigrated to the United States, my family continued to use sports as a way to meet others and assimilate into the local community.  I moved across the country for college, then again for my first job, and always used sports to develop new friendships.  As a work transplant, it was tough to find friends with the same interests until I began attending and promoting basketball game watch parties for our local alumni club.  However, organizing them was usually inefficient, and although we would bring dozens or hundreds of fans to every event, the bars were often understaffed and unprepared, even though we were generating thousands of dollars in new sales for them.  Over the next decade, I was traveling half of the time and hated trying to find my game on the TV in the hotel, wishing I could safely explore the city and socialize.  I realized that sports fans in every city needed an easy way to get together to watch their team play, and that venues would pay a service to help them fill their seats.   What is the proudest moment so far for FanWide?   There is not a single moment that stands out, but rather a collective experience, which is when we help people form meaningful relationships.  During the events which FanWide has promoted, sports fans have reconnected with old classmates, formed business partnerships, made new friends, and even developed romantic relationships!  This was even more common during the World Cup when we were helping immigrants rediscover their roots, and we even received some international press from this.  It is rewarding to see how FanWide can genuinely make an impact in people’s lives.   What about challenges for FanWide? How were you able to work around them?   Our biggest challenge has been establishing ourselves within the sports industry, as our leadership team are primarily engineers.  It seems that a majority of influencers and leaders in the sports industry are former college and pro athletes, so it was much harder to find the right connections and build trust, compared to traditional businesses.  Additionally, working with the sports teams themselves was challenging, as they are (mostly) billion-dollar brands with non-conventional economics due to their high demand.  Some organizations even expected FanWide to pay them to use our technology and services! We worked around these challenges by developing our relationships with sports influencers over time, which came through meeting them at conferences and from personal introductions through our extended network.  We developed an advisory board with sports industry veterans in broadcasting, sponsorships, advertising, and hospitality, and compensated them with equity in our company.  We have recently added former Seattle Seahawks Pro-Bowler and Super Bowl Champion Cliff Avril as a brand ambassador, advisor, and investor .  More importantly, we have established relationships with several professional teams by showing them how we can develop fan clubs throughout the country with free trials.  Now that we are starting to establish ourselves in the sports industry and build credibility, we are beginning to see a snowball effect as we become a brand name for fan clubs throughout the country.   How do you envision Visa Developer expanding FanWide capabilities or services?   Part of FanWide’s core mission is to develop and support communities, and we have an extensive network of passionate sports fans that want to contribute to their alumni association, favorite teams’ charitable foundations, or athletes’ philanthropical initiatives.  One of our product’s top feature requests was to enable charitable donations to these groups directly through FanWide’s platform.  We have looked at various payment systems and were excited to discover that Visa Checkout (part of the Visa Developer Platform) offers a free payment gateway, which maximizes the money which gets donated to the charity.  Soon sports fans will be able to support their favorite team and a great cause through FanWide!   Any tips for developers who are curious about integrating payments in to their app?   It is important to make sure that the payment system meets the needs of not just the developers, but also the business and design teams.  First, we did a business assessment, and Visa Checkout was the best payment gateway because of its free transactions, so we could maximize the money which went to charity.  Additionally, it provided a secure platform from a trusted organization, while supporting multiple payment types.   Next, we reviewed the code, and our development team liked this solution because it was clean, flexible, and easily fit into our website and mobile apps.  Seamless integration is critical whenever you are adding a new technology into an existing product to avoid regressions and provide a consistent end user experience.   Finally, our design team evaluated the UI and UX guidelines to ensure that it fit into FanWide’s existing product and user workflows.  This also passed the test as the Visa Checkout interface was well structured and documented so that the donation process would be streamlined, and FanWide could continue to provide our users with a great experience.   Stay tuned for more blogs from Visa Devleoper Influential Programmer, @SymonPerriman. He'll be documenting his journey using Visa Developer and integrating Visa Checkout into FanWide's platform. You'll get some expert dev tips to help you get started with Visa APIs.       ... View more

What is happening?   Please be advised that due to a certificate change with Symantec, there are changes needed by your team to ensure there isn’t an impact to your API calls to Visa Developer. Below includes information on how to update your Trust Store and ensure that your systems are updated in time to avoid any business impact.   What is impacted?   All API calls to the following three domains https://sandbox.api.visa.com/ https://cert.api.visa.com/  https://api.visa.com/   Why is this happening?   Visa Developer leverages GeoTrust – which is a subsidiary CA of Symantec - for the SSL/TLS certificates for the three domains listed above. Of late, DigiCert took over validation and issuance for all Symantec Website Security SSL/TLS certificates. As a result, the new certificates for the three domains are being issued from a new PKI infrastructure from DigiCert. This means that the Root CA certificate installed in your Trust Store (that is used to make API calls to the above three domains) has to be changed over from GeoTrust to DigiCert.   What do I need to do?   Action Item 1: Add the DigiCert Global Root CA certificate to your Trust Store that connects to https://sandbox.api.visa.com When: Before October 1 st , 2018   This is to enable you to test out your Trust Store configuration in the Visa Developer Sandbox environment (https://sandbox.api.visa.com) before making the same change in the production API calls to https://api.visa.com   The DigiCert Global Root CA certificate is available for download at https://dl.cacerts.digicert.com/DigiCertGlobalRootCA.crt (Overall link: https://www.digicert.com/digicert-root-certificates.htm )   If you use a JKS file as your Trust Store Refer: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/security/jsse/JSSERefGuide.html#Stores )   You can perform the following instructions to add the DigiCert Global Root CA certificate to your Trust Store. Download the DigiCert Global Root CA certificate from https://dl.cacerts.digicert.com/DigiCertGlobalRootCA.crt to your local folder. Backup your Trust Store JKS file as a safeguard. Then, run the following keytool command to add it your Trust Store   keytool -import -alias DigiCertGlobalCA -keystore <Path to JKS (Trust Store) file> -file DigiCertGlobalRootCA.crt   As part of your earlier onboarding process to Visa Developer, you should have already added the GeoTrust Global Root CA certificate to your Trust Store.   Please ensure that you do not remove the original GeoTrust Global Root CA certificate until after October 27 th .   Action Item 2: Add the DigiCert Global Root CA certificate to your Trust Store that connects to https://cert.api.visa.com and to https://api.visa.com When: Before October 16 th , 2018   The steps to perform the same are exactly identical to the steps provided under “Action Item 1”. The only difference is the Trust Store you are applying it to.   Action Item 3: Remove the GeoTrust Global Root CA certificate from your Trust Store for all 3 domains impacted When: Post October 27 th , 2018   Post October 27 th , you can clean up the older GeoTrust Global CA certificate from your Trust Store since that will no longer be required.   If you use a JKS file as your Trust Store, then you can run the following command to remove the GeoTrust Global Root CA certificate from your Trust Store. Firstly, backup your Trust Store JKS file as a safe-guard. The keytool command below assumes that the alias for the GeoTrust Global Root CA certificate in the JKS is “geotrustglobalca”. If otherwise, please use the appropriate alias.   keytool -delete -alias geotrustglobalca -keystore   <Path to JKS (TrustStore) file>   If you use middleware software at your site/data-center between your Java service and API call to Visa Developer, then please ensure that the Trust Store in your middleware software is configured appropriately. Fundamentally, the system at your end that establishes the TLS connection with Visa Developer is the one that needs the Trust Store updated with the DigiCert certificate.   If you use programming languages other than Java, then you would need to perform the appropriate steps for your programming language/tech-stack for addition of the DigiCert Global Root CA certificate hosted at https://dl.cacerts.digicert.com/DigiCertGlobalRootCA.crt to the relevant Trust Store leveraged by your system.   Please note that failure to trust the DigiCert Global Root CA certificate before October 16 th will result in Visa API service interruption.   Make sure to read the Geotrust Certificate FAQs for more.    If you have any questions please contact your designated Visa contact or developer@visa.com ... View more

The Visa Challenge 2 nd Place winning team wants to bring practical Artifical Intelligence app to Small Businesses around the world.       The team of five created Vision AI for Small Business because of the recent trend in machine learning and are working to get small businesses to actually use their open source project.   What is AI Vision for SMB and how did you come up with the idea?   AI Vision SMB is an app that leverages AI and object detection on top of traditional security cams to determine how busy the business is locally and how much inventory it has.   Why focus on Small Businesses?   Small business is the backbone of our economy, and as we make more advancement in the tech and AI, we should look at how we can utilize it to help the small businesses.   What are the opportunities for developers in building solutions for Small Businesses?   SMB will need a lot of technology advancement ranging from AI, IoT to Blockchain.  As this will help SMB to be more efficient and less wasteful.   What are the benefits Small Businesses have by using technology in their day to day operations?   SMB can access a deeper understanding of their business.  For example, they can now correlate between customer count and revenue, if they see customer could not goes up and profit goes down, it maybe the best idea to raise prices.   What Visa APIs are you using in the project and what user pain-point does it address?   We used Visa queue insight to provide competitor analysis and merchant to merchant to make new orders when inventory is low.   How else could use see commerce being included in the application?   You can buy local ads automatically when you see customers not showing up.   Why did you choose to submit for the Visa Challenge?   Because I believe Visa can make a difference to help SMB to reach their full potential.   What is next for AI Vision for SMB?   We are going to try to sell to a few SMBs and see if we can push the product forward. ... View more

Visa Challenge 1 st Place Winners came up with the idea for Blindsight as part of high school engineering final project.         Senioritis. Commonly known as the affliction of students in their final year of high school characterized by a decline in motivation or performance. Did you experience this? Well, team Blindsight did not.   This past May, just weeks away from graduation, a team of high school students formed to work on their final high school engineering project. That’s when the idea for Blindsight was created and since then, the team has not stopped.   Blindsight is an assistive armband for the visually impaired. A camera continually takes images of the user's surroundings, and a description of these images are read out loud to the user, allowing visually impaired people to visualize their environment despite not being able to see.   This idea and product won 1 st place in their high school entrepreneur project, Grand Prize for the China-US Young Maker Competition Regional Qualifier (becoming one of the ten teams to represent the US in China) and now Visa Challenge 1 st Place Winner for The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon.   The team is now preparing for the Disrupt Semi-Finals where they will demo Blindsight in hopes of winning the first-ever global virtual TechCrunch Hackathon.   How did you come up with idea for Blindsight?   Our team came up with the idea for Blindsight as part of our high school engineering final project. One of our friend’s dad suffers from a condition that renders him almost completely blind, and we were surprised to learn that the headset he currently uses costs a staggering $10,000. With our backgrounds in software and hardware development, we were confident that we could address some of the difficulties blind people face through a new combination of ubiquitous technology. After a few weeks of intensive prototyping, our team had established a functional concept device that enabled ‘sight’ through touch, and thus Blindsight was born.   Why do you think some mobile apps have not tapped in to creating their solutions for visually impaired?   We believe that there are a number of factors inhibiting the creation and adoption of new solutions for the visually impaired. Developers often prioritize rapid advancements in functionality for their products at the cost of integrating accessibility, since the population of visually impaired individuals is relatively small compared to their overall target markets. If developers do choose to focus on accessibility technologies, there is often a disconnect between the developed solution and the actual needs of blind people themselves. Because of these factors, technology for the visually impaired has not advanced at the same rate as in our society at large.   Have you tested this with any visually impaired people? If so, what has been their reaction?   As we began working on Blindsight, we were able to leverage social media and our professional networks to organically connect with nearly a dozen visually impaired individuals. The response we have received has been very positive and reassuring, since our primary focus with Blindsight is to make a truly useful and functional device. We have used our contacts with these individuals to inform and modify our design choices as we iterated on the product. At this stage in development, we are not yet ready to send beta devices to visually impaired individuals, though we hope to reach this milestone soon.   What Visa APIs are you using in the project and what user pain-point does it address?   We utilized the Visa ATM Location API, the Locate Merchant API, Visa Direct API, and the Mobile Location Confirmation API in this project. Through the use of these features, we are able to provide a better payment solution for blind people, and also allow them to make simple direct transactions. Additionally, we can find blind-friendly ATMs specifically for the user, and utilize location confirmation to prevent fraud.   How else could use see commerce being included in the application?   VISA is already a broadly accepted commerce platform, and we believe that our integration with VISA will encourage local businesses to become blind-friendly. Through notifications integrated with Blindsight, wearers will be able to preferentially select establishments that have accessible features, like blind-friendly ATMs. As we develop further, we believe that commerce can be integrated to make the user’s life simpler while also incentivizing accessibility for businesses.   Why did you choose to submit for the Visa Challenge?   As we began to build out features for Blindsight and the accompanying smart assistant, we recognized that payment handling was an area of potential concern for the visually impaired. Current app-based solutions are able to handle actual monetary currency, but a safe and secure credit card solution was lacking. By integrating with the widely utilized VISA platform and submitting for this challenge, our team was able to add important functionality and also win funds to further improve our device and design.   What is next for Blindsight?   Our team aims to utilize the funds we have won and also seek additional capital to advance our product to the next step. We are in the process of determining options for manufacturing our device into a much smaller profile that better resembles the traditional image of a smartwatch. We are also working on incorporating new software and hardware technologies, including a dynamic Braille ‘display.’   Stay up to date on the latest from TechCrunch Disrupt results by following us on Twitter @VisaDeveloper or signing up for our newsletters here. ... View more

22 teams submitted for the Visa Challenge in this year’s first ever global virtual TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon.   It sure has been an exciting 2 months! Since June, more than 1,000 developers, programmers and hackers from all over the globe have been working on creative solutions to submit for the first-ever global virtual TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon.   As a refresher, Visa joined the fun by adding a special contest and prize. We challenged developers to submit a game-changer – a new creative way to improve the payment experience for anyone, anywhere.     Developers did not disappoint. 22 teams submitted to “Disrupt Commerce” hoping to land in the top three spots. It wasn’t easy narrowing it down, there were so many impressive hacks. But…(drum roll)…here they are:   1st PLACE –“Blindsight:Virtual Eyes Through Haptic Feedback”   Prize: $8,000 and Innovator Passes to the SF Disrupt Conference   A wearable device with the potential to greatly increase the independence of the blind. Blindsight is an armband and smartphone app combination, designed to help the visually impaired by integrating machine learning with haptic feedback. Blindsight is capable of sending and receiving payments through the Visa API integration. The relevant Visa APIs allow for finding ATMs and merchants that accept VISA, along with a credit card fraud prevention and mobile payment solution. Watch their demo here  and stay tuned, next week we’ll have a Q&A with the team on how they created this hack!   Blindsight also landed a spot as a semi-finalist Virtual Hackathon team, that will demo their product at Disrupt SF 2018!   2nd PLACE - “AI Vision for SMB”   Prize - $5,000 and Innovator Passes to the SF Disrupt Conference   This AI vision kit can be used to count items, includes multiple cameras on a single unit to track multiple things and uses a data storage solution for small businesses. Its purpose is to provide a deeper analysis using the computer vision data that can help business owners to make decisions. It can provide insights on how busy a physical store is, matched to the revenue that it is generating, along with insights to the wait time of similar stores through Visa Queue Insights. Plus, it is meant to track inventory through the same computer vision. Watch their demo here and stay tuned for a Q&A with AI Vision for Small Business next week.   3rd PLACE – “Agri360”   Prize: Oculus Rift and Innovator Passes to the SF Disrupt Conference   Cryptographically secured credit risk score for small farmers. Credit risk score using TensorFlow ML platform and Blockchain technology. Watch their demo here and stay tuned for a Q&A with Agri360 next week in our blogs   10 Visa teams as TechCrunch Disrupt Semi-Finalist   These Visa Challenge teams landed one of 30 spots in the Semi-Finals demo pit. Only the top 10 will move on to demo their hack on The Next Stage.   Good-luck Visa Dev Squad!   Rivis faceStylr Check-In, Cheque-Out SeeThru Price Transparency Marketplace GeoWorx PruPay UPayBro Airship bot Pricepoint Blindsight – Virtual Eyes Through Haptic Feedback   Congrats to all teams who competed in the hackathon and best of luck to those in the Semi-Finals. ... View more

Peoples Payment Solutions, in working with TELUS Health and Payment Solutions, will be among the first companies in Canada to leverage the Visa Developer Platform. They will use Visa Direct APIs, a business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) solution to better serve their customers with quick, simple and secure payments.   “Time to move money was very in demand from our customers; to be able to get money to and from people faster than traditional methods. We wanted to bring to market a fast funds product to the Canadian region,” said Howard Klein, President at Peoples Payment Solutions.       “When the opportunity came that we could integrate directly with the Visa Developer Platform, we felt that was our quickest path to get our products to market and it turned out to be the case. The Visa Direct API allowed us to bring to market a very compelling product in a very short period of time,” said Klein.   Once in market, Peoples Payment Solutions and TELUS Health’s Health Benefits Management platform, powered by Visa Developer, will enable push payments directly into a customer’s Visa debit account in real-time. This will significantly speed up funds disbursements for patients who are, for example, submitting benefits claims from healthcare professionals, shortening it to instant reimbursement versus waiting several days to a week for payout.   “Working with innovative companies like Visa and Peoples Payment Solutions allows us to lead the way in providing an even better, faster benefit claims experience for our insurance partners and ultimately, plan members,” said Luc Vilandré, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, TELUS Health and Payment Solutions. “Leveraging the power of real-time technology to disburse funds instantly is far more efficient for patients and removes an unnecessary layer of complexity, enhancing the overall benefits experience.”   “We are first in Canada to bring the Visa Direct solution directly to fintechs, SMBs, and enterprise customers. Working in conjunction with technology leaders, like Visa and TELUS Health, we can now offer a comprehensive set of APIs that enable businesses to send real-time payments to Visa debit cards in Canada," said Howard Klein, President at Peoples Payment Solutions. "We are seeing continued innovation in the payments landscape, and at Peoples Payment Solutions, we are demonstrating our ability to lead with emerging technology.”   Visa Direct transforms payments by creating a convenient and frictionless way to send and receive money, regardless of borders or location. The Visa Direct platform is already available in more than 200 markets around the world, and enables a range of real-time payment use cases backed by the security and scale of Visa’s global payment network, including:    Business-to-business: enabling businesses to pay freelancers, contractors, and other small businesses – in real time. Business-to-consumer: enabling businesses to send almost any kind of payment directly to a bank account – such as insurance payouts and real-time merchant settlement. Person-to-person: enabling consumers to pay each other quickly, conveniently, and securely, often through their connected devices – such as when splitting bills or giving gifts.  Learn more about and test  the Visa Direct APIs here.  ... View more

“Where is the closest ATM?” or “Please cancel my card” examples of new digital capabilities using Finn AI technology and Visa Developer Platform APIs   Finn AI plans to enable new capabilities in conversation banking chatbots and artificial intelligence, powered by the Visa Developer Platform.   This collaboration will see the Vancouver-based fintech use Visa Developer Platform APIs to enhance their conversational AI technology to provide a more personalized experience for banks to interact with their customers, including re-imagining the travel experience for cardholders. For example, a customer could chat with a virtual assistant and follow an easy, intuitive process to ensure their cards are optimized while they are travelling; from turning on travel notifications before departing, retrieving foreign exchange rates while at the airport, and locating the nearest ATM at their destination.  A customer could even disable a misplaced card to ensure protection against fraudulent transactions through a simple, natural conversation.       "We are very excited to team up with Visa Canada to leverage the Visa Developer APIs," stated Jake Tyler, CEO at Finn AI. "This will help banks meet consumers' needs on their terms, allowing them to set travel notifications, flag fraudulent transactions, manage subscriptions and more – as easily as chatting to their friends – 24/7 in the channels of their choice. This simple digital access delivers strong value to banks, reducing in-bound calls and helping them stay top of wallet."   Finn.AI says they have been working to enable Visa Controls API to allow people to temporarily freeze or put their card on hold when they are in a lost scenario. Visa Transaction Controls provide a powerful and convenient way for cardholders to track and manage all payment activity on enrolled accounts and tokens.    VTC control-types let cardholders place their own rules on a payment card's use and when to be notified of different financial events. Independent alert and decline settings can be tailored to different  transaction and merchant types (e.g. ATM, Ecom, Gasoline, Gambling...) or can be applied to all payment account activity.   Explore VTC and start testing the APIs by viewing the documentation here.      About Finn AI   Finn AI is an award-winning, AI-powered virtual assistant built for personal banking and finance. We put a personal banker in every bank customer's pocket, helping them to manage their money wherever they are, whatever they need - via a simple, natural conversation.   The Finn AI team of data scientists, engineers, and financial industry experts helps banks and credit unions transform customer engagement and increase financial literacy, while delivering the convenience and savings of a digital-first experience.   Today we have successful public deployments in three languages with a growing global customer base that includes ATB Financial, Bank of   Montreal   (BMO), Banpro Grupo Promerica, and Commonwealth Bank. ... View more

Based on feedback we’ve received from you, we have launched new features and a step-by-step guide to help you through the process of going live.   It all starts in your project dashboard, by selecting ‘Going Live’. The new dashboard now walks you through the detailed steps and processes to complete the application for the credentials for your project.   Keep in mind, based on your profile and your project’s use case, you will be asked to provide specific details that will help Visa evaluate your request and provide you with terms and pricing for the Visa capabilities that you identified for your project.   Here's information you will be expected to provide to us (get more details in our guide here):   Register Your Company Provide Project Information (i.e. specific use case details) Client Onboarding Form Certificate Signing Request Once you’ve submitted all the required information you will receive an email with your credentials which you will need to use to chain your certificate into the key store. The new going live guide also has more details on:   Creating Keystores Using Java Keytool Using Open SSL   If you’ve reached this step in the process, signed all necessary contracts and your credentials are integrated into your project, you are ready to start testing in production!   Make sure to take a moment to read through the Going Live guide which has all the details and steps you need to know. As always, reach out with any questions. developer@visa.com ... View more

Imagine hosting some friends over to watch a game and you realize you’re all out of pizza. You want to order more but not sure if there are any offers happening in your area. OsmosisAI has come up with a solution by pulling from the Offers Data API, part of the Visa Merchant Offers Resource Center.           This Visual Coupon demo app is for enterprises to market to consumers. It uses Computer Vision AI on an iOS device, powered by OsmosisAI, to visually identify products and objects that a brand can then immediately send a coupon or offer for either that product or a similar product that they want to market to that user.  Coupons and offers are pulled from the Offers Data API on the Visa Developer Platform.   The Visa Merchant Offers Resource Center is a central offer repository that provides developers an easy way to promote merchant offers to their cardholders. VMORC is a multilingual application used by various teams worldwide to store offers as they are procured. All functions supported by the VMORC APIs are READ-ONLY. All responses are returned in a JSON format. Read through the docs here.    “Using an image of a product taken on a mobile device to instantly tell you offers about that product or similar products is a frictionless and natural way for consumers to learn about brands and acquire their products anywhere, anytime," said Ryan VanAlstine.  "OsmosisAI powers the underlying intelligence for the brand by allowing them to empower their customer to recognize the object using AI and connecting them to the offer.”   OsmosisAI is a platform that enables enterprises to use Vision AI and embedded business logic to achieve business outcomes.  Using intuitive tools designed for business users (with an optional API for developers and data scientists), OsmosisAI empowers organizations to orchestrate the end-to-end process of “training” any camera-enabled device to “see” an object or business condition through AI techniques and then trigger an action plan to achieve an outcome based on what is “seen.”  OsmosisAI enables enterprises to keep their training data private in their own private instance in the OsmosisAI Cloud or in their datacenter via an on-premise version of OsmosisAI.   ... View more

Developers expected to experience Visual Buying using Vision AI technology at Austin Meetup.   The next Visa Developer Meetup will kick-off in Austin on May 23 rd and will cover off on Smart Cities.       We have partnered with OsmosisAI, which offers a platform that enables enterprises to innovate their business models and achieve powerful business outcomes through the use of Vision AI, mobile and enterprise markets.   Ryan VanAlstine, OsmosisAI CTO and Co-Founder will be showcasing two demos that integrate Visa APIs into their platform.   One will mirror our Enhanced Accounts Payable Experience use case. The demo will use B2B Virtual Account Payable Methods and Merchant Search APIs to show an automated purchase order based/work form app that uses merchant search to automatically identify suppliers that can provide resources.   The second demo will show Visa Merchant Offers Resource Center in action as a user walks around their house and is pinged when an item with an offer is detected, ending with Visa Checkout to purchase the item.   “Combining the Vision AI capabilities of OsmosisAI with Visa’s APIs enables merchants and enterprises to provide a frictionless Visual Buying experience anywhere with just a camera and a Visa account,” said Ryan VanAlstine.  “We’re excited about demonstrating Visual Buying in action with our two demo apps and sharing knowledge on how building on the Visa Developer Platform made this possible.”   CJ Dubash, Product Manager at Visa and Smart City Lead will also give attendees an overview on Visa’s three pillar approach to smart cities: Intelligent mobility, digital economy and eGovernment.   If you are in the Austin area, join us. Registration here.   Stay tuned for videos of the demos next week when we recap the event. ... View more

The Visa Developer team helped teams at the #SmallBusinessWeek Hackathon, which was co-sponsored by Visa and the US Small Business Administration. This was the first hackathon held during National Small Business Week.       The challenge: build a game-changing tool to help small business owners focus more on their true passion by reimagining small business financial management.     And that’s exactly what 65 developers, idea generators, designers and small business owners did in Washington, D.C., kicking off the U first ever hackathon during National Small Business Week.    Developers made their way to the Ronald Regan Building Friday afternoon in hopes of landing one of the hackathon cash prizes: $10K for the grand prize, $7K for first runner up and $5K for second runner up.   Visa also offered a Visa Challenge, a $2K prize for the team that best used Visa Data and Analytic APIs in their hackathon solution.   Friday evening gave hackathon attendees an opportunity to form teams, get to know the Visa Dev and U.S. SBA support on-site, plus ask any questions about Visa Developer Platform APIs available for integration with their solutions.     Victor Zhiltsov, Sr. Director of the Visa Developer Center helped lead a workshop Saturday morning, giving developers a chance to ask any technical or product questions they had about our APIs. Victor introduced the small business filter for VDP APIs, a part of our recent platform release that was provided to help developers easily navigate to APIs meant for small business solutions.    Victor was also one of the Visa judges and noted that the particular backgrounds of and interplay between the attendees helped produce demo solutions for business owners:    “It is always impressive and inspiring to see the level of talent of the developers at the hackathons. What was unique about this hackathon though is that several teams were organized by the actual small business owners, solving the actual day-to-day issues that the small businesses have. Hearing these small business owners tell their stories and present their solutions was very exciting,” he said.    By the end of the weekend, 13 teams pitched their hackathon demos. We saw some very cool, creative and innovative solutions, including:   An app for small businesses who are looking for lenders. This could help small business owners find a lender, based off scored business profiles, generated through data from SBA and Visa transactions. They used Visa’s Digital Card and Account Services. A social gifting platform for small to large businesses that utilizes Visa APIs like Visa Direct and Visa B2B Virtual Account Payments to authenticate users and merchants while facilitating payments from users and payments to both users and merchants.         While it was very hard to narrow it down to one, the winner of the #SmallBusinessWeek Hackathon was:   Hermyz, a bot that enables small businesses to manage and pay invoices using the Visa Direct API, which could eliminate the need for inefficient paper-based processes. Team members were Christopher Phillips, Mike Nabil, Sandro Guraspasvili, Zach Bauer and Mohamed Elkarim.       The winner of the Visa Challenge prize was:   DataBridge, a solution that simplifies business intelligence for small businesses and gathers customer information based on geo-location allowing businesses to target marketing campaigns specific to demographic and geographic segments. The team was led by a DC small business owner who used Visa APIs including: Visa Merchant Locator Merchant Measurement and Merchant Search DataBridge team members included Yingquan Li, William Lemus, Tekle Ayele, Andrew Kim, Hua Wang.       The hackathon represented the kickoff of Visa’s role as the Presenting Sponsor of National Small Business Week. “This event was a great extension of the strong partnership we’ve had with the U.S. Small Business Administration over the past decade”, said Justin King, VP of Visa Small Business Product. “The foundation of our partnership is based on a common goal of enabling small businesses to thrive, and that was the outcome this weekend.”, he continued.   Congrats, to all developers and stay tuned as we catch-up with winners to learn more about their projects. Watch the full recap below!   ... View more

The new Small Businesses filter is part of our latest release, in time for the Small Business Hackathon on April 27 th     Small Businesses can now easily identify APIs on the Visa Developer Platform that are relevant to them. As part of our latest release, we have added a filter on the API page, just for Small Businesses. This change will help third party developers and financial institutions navigate to small business APIs and use-cases so they can create solutions for these passionate entrepreneurs.           This new update comes just in time for developers to use at the upcoming Small Business Week Hackathon in Washington, DC, April 27 th -29 th   Visa is teaming up with the U.S. Small Business Administration to kick-off the first National #SmallBusinessWeek Hackathon, with a $24,000 prize pool for winning submissions.   The hackathon challenges developers to build a game changing new tool that help business owners focus more on their true passion by reimagining small business financial management. Attendees will need to use open datasets and APIs from the U.S. Government as well as Visa APIS to build these solutions.    Learn more about the hackathon and get the official rules, register here. ... View more

Visa Token Services and Visa Checkout APIs have been available on the Visa Developer Center (developer.visa.com) since the launch of Visa Developer in February 2016.   These products are also available to be managed from Visa Digital Solutions Platform (developer.digital.visa.com for Sandbox and business.digital.visa.com for Production). Until now, developers seeking to utilize Visa Checkout or Visa Token Services through the Visa Developer Center were required to register and maintain accounts on Visa Digital Solutions Platform as well, though developers registered on Visa Digital Solutions Platform were not required to register on Visa Developer Center. In short, this resulted in developers managing multiple sets of login credentials to access multiple portals, with completely different experiences and overlapping functionality.    This has long been a key customer pain point and cause for confusion.  One of Visa’s tenets is to offer a simple consistent “One Visa” experience with improved and streamlined onboarding and integration management work-flows for developers interested in Visa’s Digital Services including Visa Checkout and Visa Token Services through Visa Developer Center.   As of April 2, 2018 Visa has unified the Visa Digital Solutions platform with the Visa Developer Center to provide a seamless integration experience.   The key benefits include:   Single-Portal, Single-Sign-On:  Use a single account on Visa Developer Center to use Visa Checkout or Visa Token Services for end to end developer configuration management. Product Settings Available in Project: Access Visa Checkout and Visa Token Services profiles and configurations pages via your project on Visa Developer Center. Swift Path to Production: Direct merchants have a seamless path to request production credentials for their project.   What has changed for you as of April 2, 2018?   If you had an account on Visa Digital Solutions Platform (developer.digital.visa.com:   When you visit Visa Digital Solutions Platform (developer.digital.visa.com), your browser will be automatically redirected to Visa Developer Center (developer.visa.com).  You will be able to use your existing password from Visa Digital Solutions Platform (developer.digital.visa.com) to login on the redirected site i.e. Visa Developer Center (developer.visa.com) via the “Sign-In” link on the top of the page.  However, if you already had an account on Visa Developer Center (developer.visa.com), your login credentials from Visa Developer Center will be honored and will not change. Once logged in on the Visa Developer Center, you can find your Visa Checkout or Visa Token Services project (migrated/copied from your Visa Digital Solutions Platform account) located under the Project Dashboard for easy access to the API keys, credentials, and documentation. Note – if you had an existing Visa Checkout or Visa Token Services Project on Visa Developer Center in our Sandbox, you may need to re-create the project to get the full experience.   Frequently Asked Questions?   Will my Sandbox API credentials and or Production API credentials still work after this account migration? Yes, your runtime credentials will still work.  You do not need to create or generate new API keys for Sandbox or Production. I tried to login and I was asked to activate my account.  What is this? As a part of migrating accounts to Visa Developer Center, for your protection we’d like you to simply revalidate your account.  You will receive an email to do so.  Just click the link provided in the email and you’re done! How do I get access to my product profiles and configuration pages? Your profiles and configuration pages are located in your Project Dashboard via the “Configurations” link provided in the Left Navigation bar.  Once you select this option, you will see Visa Checkout or Visa Token services listed in the main pane.  Select the accordion menu icon next to the API to reveal the links to the product specific profiles and configurations. Why can I no longer select Visa Token Services during project creation? Please refer to our updated Visa Token Services product documentation page for additional information.  If you’re still interested in using Visa Token Services and believe you meet the requirements, please reach out to us at developer@visa.com   As always, we strive to provide an easy-to-use experience that empowers developers to integrate swiftly, test comprehensively.  We welcome your feedback.  Let us know how we’re doing!  Please submit feedback via the Feedback menu on the right side of the page, or email developer@visa.com.     ... View more

Matt Smith   Visa VP of Platform Strategy Matt D. Smith is the Vice President of Platform Strategy at Visa. In his role, Matt is responsible for leading product strategy for the Visa Developer Platform, opening the use of Visa capabilities as the industry’s premier commerce and payments enabling platform.  The Visa Developer Platform provides clients and partners simplified access to many of Visa’s most in-demand products and services through an open network of Visa APIs.  Matt oversees the Platform Strategy team who works to define and evangelize the platform to enable clients and partners to transform great ideas into payments innovation.  You’ll be hearing from Matt Smith, about the results of the data analytics and user experience study by Forrester—and how partnering with companies can help remove user friction with actionable insights from advanced analytics.          You want to develop amazing experiences for your users. But according to the Forrester study, less than 50% of companies feel they are applying data insights to improve their businesses in a very effective way. Watch this webinar to hear more as Matt covers:   Results from Forrester’s latest study on data analytics and customer experience The commerce applications for data insights, predictive engines, and machine learning How leveraging partners can accelerate data intelligence impact ... View more

Shiv Singh    Visa SVP of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships Shiv Singh leads global innovation go-to-market strategies and Visa's Everywhere Initiative, which enables startups around the globe to compete for a chance to partner with Visa.   During the Visa Innovation Series webinar, Shiv will walk you through the Innovations for a Cashless World report, created in partnership with GfK across 16 countries.  Download the report.       Join Shiv as he covers the findings of the report and gives his unique perspectives on:  5 global commerce trends you need to know for 2018 7 consumer research findings about internationally changing attitudes 5 of his ideas to bring innovative products to market       ... View more

Written by: Steven Pryor, Visa Global Innovation Marketing    Visa Sensory Branding is now available for download as an SDK for iOS, Android, and web through the Visa Developer Platform.   What is Visa Sensory Branding?   Visa Sensory Branding is a new suite of branding, which includes unique sound, animation and haptic (vibration) cues designed to signify quick and secure transactions in digital and physical retail environments when consumers pay with Visa.   Why Visa Sensory Branding?   Gartner predicts that Internet of Things (IoT) devices will grow from around 11 billion connected devices today to as many as 20.4 billion devices by 2020 1 and many of these devices will present consumers with new and more convenient ways to pay. As new payment experiences continue to take shape in the world, it becomes increasingly important for consumers to feel confident about their payment experience in digital environments. Visa Sensory Branding offers consumers the assurances we know they want when they use Visa.   What is included in the SDK?   Each SDK boasts an easy to use API with a pre-set default configuration. The SDKs also include a sample app, which allows you to preview how Visa Sensory Branding will render in your solution. If you’re a developer who prefers more control and customization, the SDKs also include a number of configurable presentation settings including:   Choice of full-color or customizable, monochromatic background themes Constrained view vs. full-screen flag presentation Toggling functionality to enable or disable sound, haptic, and confirmation checkmark   SDK Sample App allows developers the ability to customize the Visa Sensory Branding experience for solutions. Developers can customize different features.   What are common use cases for Visa Sensory Branding?   The most common use case would be a purchase made using a Visa product. However, Visa is also evaluating future use cases for Visa Sensory Branding such as peer-to-peer payments, reloading funds to a Visa pre-paid product, and adding a Visa card to your mobile wallet.   What are the benefits of Visa Sensory Branding?   Not only does Visa Sensory Branding sound (…and feel, and look) cool, there’s real benefit to consumers and merchants alike. Consumer research shows that sensory branding has a positive effect on the user’s experience:   94 percent 2 cited greater favorability toward merchants and technology partners 90 percent 2 cited greater favorability toward bank issuers 81 percent 2 said they would have a more positive perception of merchants who used either sound or animation cues Less than a second in length 2 , the sound of Visa was found to signal speed and convenience Haptic technology was shown to incite feelings of “happiness” and “excitement” among consumers 3   Visa Sensory Branding will help to put the consumer experience at the forefront of the payment moment. As the world of payments continues to evolve, Visa’s unique sound, animation, and haptic cues will collectively serve as global symbols of innovation, speed, trust, and security.   Questions? Please email us at VisaSensoryBranding@visa.com   1 Gartner, Inc., Gartner Says 8.4 Billion Connected "Things" Will Be in Use in 2017, Up 31 Percent From 2016, 2017 2 Visa, Inc., The Value of Multi-Sensory Branding: Sound and Animation Elements in Cardless Payment Experiences, 2016 3 IPG Lab, Ads You Can Feel: The New Mobile Experience, 2017 ... View more

The new Visa Developer Partner Showcase highlights how our partners are using Visa APIs in market   This last February marks two years since we opened up the Visa network with the launch of the Visa Developer Platform. Since then, we have had the honor to work with many clients and developers from around the world to build solutions that meet the demands of consumers and merchants who are looking to delight their customers with more innovative, secure and easier ways to pay.   In two years, we’ve dramatically enhanced the developer portal to create a better experience by adding solution pages, more documentation for developers and easier ways to connect with us.   In two years, we’ve added more APIs to the portal, nearly reaching 100 Visa APIs for you to explore and test.     In two years, we’ve seen key clients and partners go-to-market with commerce solutions that help create seamless and secure payment experiences for their users…enabled by Visa Developer Platform.   “We live in a time where digital and physical worlds are constantly colliding, offering endless ways for you to evolve how you operate and delight your customers,” said Paul Walsh, Senior Vice President, Visa Platform Strategy and Innovation. ”Our growing platform of APIs is helping clients and partners around the world transform great ideas into exciting digital commerce experiences.”   What have our Partners Built?   Glad you asked. We are excited to introduce a new feature called the Visa Developer Partner Showcase. The Partner Showcase highlights how some of our partners from all around the world are using Visa Developer Platform APIs to build commerce experiences for their end users.   Experiences like using Foreign Exchange Rate APIs to simplify currency for traveling cardholders, or using Visa Direct to let customers make digital payments by scanning a QR code at POS or using Mobile Location Confirmation to give users added fraud protection on their Visa cards.   Each Partner Page is Unique   Our partners come from different parts of the world, working to meet the needs of their customers. We invite you to explore each individual partner page, and learn the approach that worked for them; some needed one Visa API for their solution mixed with other APIs and others required a mash-up of APIs. No matter the route taken, we are excited to have enabled all of these experiences and to now be able to share more about their paths to success with you.   “The Visa Developer Platform was very simple to use, it was rich with documentation on how to go about the integration process and it was very well organized in general. It greatly enhanced our efficiency.” – Thomas Matthew, Software Architect, Interswitch   “Pulse iD has been rapidly scaling across APAC, our partnership with Visa has helped us navigate a very complex landscape.” – Alex Topaloski, CEO, Pulse iD   “Having access to defined APIs, all the documentation and sample code was perfect to help us scope out how they would fit into our existing platform—saving us time in getting a working solution up and running. Throughout the entire process the experience was brilliant and it’s great to see Visa providing an area where technology companies can access APIs readily to help ensure great solutions can be delivered to market at speed.” – Andrew Will, Product Owner, Fraedom   Real Results   Most of all, we want you to get inspired and see the possibilities. We are showcasing these partners because we want others to create similar results. For example:   UWCU: With a 3-month goal of 15,000 unique enrollments out of 175,000 qualified cardholders, UWCU realized 15,000 enrollments in seven days and almost 50,000 enrollments after just four months following the launch of its app. Combine: The Global ATM Map was one of the fastest to deliver features and one of the most popular amongst their users Check out the Visa Developer Partner Showcase today and get inspired to build with Visa APIs. ... View more

You want to understand payments to build tomorrow’s commerce experiences; we want to deliver developer resources to enable innovation.   Cue the Payments 101 for Developers Meetup in San Francisco.     The event’s goal was to give developers a “cheat sheet” style introduction to the payments ecosystem.    Guest speakers Ahmed Siddiqui (Marqeta) and Carl Perry (Square) joined the Visa Developer team to highlight opportunities for innovation in commerce and payments.    Visa’s VP of Product Strategy Matt Smith began the first session, Deliver the Commerce Experiences of Tomorrow. Matt touched on how leveraging partners can accelerate data intelligence impact. “Partnering on experience not just technology is the future of commerce,” Matt said.            Ahmed Siddiqui, VP of Product Management at Marqeta was up next with The Anatomy of a Swipe, Dip and Tap. Ahmed walked developers through what happens during a payment Authorization, with engaging hand-drawn sketches to animate and simplify what happens when a payment goes through the ecosystem.     “For developers we are taking something that is very complicated and distilling it down to be very simple, so that developers can focus on innovating rather than thinking about, ‘oh my god, there is all this complex stuff that I need to think about,” said Ahmed.   Ahmed’s session also walked through opportunities in issuing and processing. He talked about creating virtual cards, which is a capability available through Marqeta’s Open APIs.     “What is really surprising is there are so many APIs out there which developers can build on top of and it’s actually really easy to innovate now, versus let’s say a few years ago,” he said.      Carl Perry, Developer Platform Lead at Square, spoke on the important aspects that platforms need to focus on to make developers successful. He called it “5 Minutes to Wow”.    “In commerce and payments, it is super important for people to talk to each other and to companies, who are working together trying to solve similar problems. What we do not want to do is throw a ton of information to developers, which might confuse them and look disconnected. This is a way for all of us to get together and talk about the same things and hopefully make developers lives significantly easier.”   Carl said successful platforms check-off 6 points: simplicity, innovation, stability, availability, cost and commerce.   “It’s about commerce. Facilitating commerce across any channel. Facilitate that customer journey- this is what a commerce platform should model,” he said.    Watch the recap video below:     Not able to make the Meetup? You are in luck. The topic of Payments 101 for Developers is so popular, we are turning it into a webinar.   Join Ahmed and Carl as they cover off on the same content in the Payments 101 for Developers Webinar. Stay tuned for registration details so you can ask the questions you want answered on the payments ecosystem.                   (Stay up to date on when the next Meetup is happening and join our newsletter and email communications. Click here to sign-up) ... View more

  By Ahmed Siddiqui, VP of Product Management at Marqeta   (If you want to learn more about the payments ecosystem or ask any questions you may have in real time, Ahmed will be covering this and more in the Payments 101 for Developers Webinar 4/3 at 11am. Tune in and ask the questions you want answered on the payments ecosystem. Registration details here)   The payments ecosystem always starts with people who want to buy things from other people. Historically these people would use cash, but now more and more people are moving to pay with cards - be it credit, debit, or prepaid cards. These cards are typically issued by an Issuer or Issuing Bank. However, these cards are useless unless Merchants are willing to accept them. In order to accept cards, you need a terminal. Terminals are provided by Acquirers or Gateways. Behind an Acquirer is always a Merchant Bank that receives funds. The transmission protocol or “rails” is managed by Networks such as Visa.   When a consumer swipes, dips or taps their method of payment at the Merchant terminal, this starts the authorization process. This usually takes less than three seconds, but a lot happens in that time. After a card is swiped at the terminal, the Acquirer takes information off of the card and determines it is a Visa card. The Acquirer then calls Visa and sends data over via an ISO 8583 message (the International Organization for Standardization’s standard for systems that exchange electronic transactions initiated by cardholders using payment cards), asking the Network if the customer is actually allowed to transact.   Visa receives the ISO 8583 message from the Acquirer, and takes note of the card number. Based on the card number, Visa routes a message to the Issuer Processor of the card. The Issuer Processor receives the message, parses the ISO 8583 message and evaluates the message based on pre-set rules in the system typically determined by the Terms of Service with the Issuing Bank. These rules can include:   Does the cardholder have available funds? Is this Merchant or Merchant type allowed or not? Are there daily spend limits?   Depending on what comes back the Issuer Processor then makes a decision to approve or deny the transaction. This decision is then sent back to the Network. The Network relays this back to the Acquirer, and the Acquirer renders the response on the terminal.   Assuming a cardholder’s transaction goes through, Merchants will initiate the settlement process (if required) at the end of the day, to move their daily transactions to the Network. The Network will then request money from the Issuing bank, and the Merchant could receive their money as soon as the next business day. A small piece of the money that is moved to the Merchant bank is distributed to all parties in the Payment Ecosystem (the Acquirer, Issuer and the Network). Called Interchange, this is done in order to cover the cost of convenience to customers wishing to pay with cards.   In the event that Marqeta issued the card being used, Marqeta can generate a clean JSON out of the ISO 8583 message that can be easily read by developers during the transaction. The developers can also  take action based on the data received -- all within the three second authorization time window. Some of the things Marqeta knows about a transaction include:   Who is the cardholder? What is the card number? What Network is this card on? When did the transaction occur? Where did the transaction occur? Which Merchant is this cardholder trying to buy from? How much is the cardholder trying to spend? What type of Merchant is this cardholder trying to buy from?   There are other opportunities in Issuing Processing that developers can take advantage of by using Marqeta’s modern open API payment card issuing platform.   Marqeta gives you the ability to create your own physical, virtual or tokenized cards. In addition to enabling card creation, Marqeta gives companies the opportunity to authorize their own transactions. Some parameters are pre-set, such as spend limits, company restrictions, and Merchant type restrictions. Through Just-in-Time “JIT” Funding (real-time funding of user accounts at time of purchase, enabling customers to maintain cards at $0 balance), Marqeta is able to pass data over to the company so that they can make real-time decisions on just about anything like time of spend, geolocation, total spend amount, etc. This enables companies to control where card users are spending money and helps reduce fraud to near zero.       ... View more

To help devs make the most of 2018, the Samsung Developer team is posting informative Q&A’s with industry experts throughout the month of January called The 2018 Source Code: A Dev’s Guide.   In their latest post, Visa's VP of Platform Strategy Matt Smith shared his insights, tips and predictions for the mobile payments space.   Matt touches on how devs can ensure information shared across apps stay secure:   “The goal of a mobile developer in the payment space in regards to security should be to answer the question following question: “How do I gain and maintain my customer’s trust?” Security is, and will continue to be, paramount in the mobile payments industry. SSL, TLS, encryption and biometrics are all technologies that every mobile developer wanting to deliver payment apps should be using. Proper vetting of resources that you want to consume will help to ensure that your customer’s data is kept secure. Today’s customers are willing to make commerce a daily part of their mobile routine; your app’s security should always reinforce that decision.”   Make sure to check out the post where to read more on Matt’s thoughts on:   How does he think the rise of mobile commerce changes the way devs design apps Mobile payments are a space where devs need to collaborate with big financial players/institutions. What’s your advice to devs on strategic partnerships? Doubts about security can get in the way of consumer adoption regarding mobile payments. How can devs ensure that the information shared across apps is secure? The future of mobile payments is rapidly changing. What is the one big bet that developers should be making in 2018 when it comes to developing mobile app payment solutions?   Thanks to the Samsung Developer team for sharing these insights to developers.   ... View more

Goodbye, passwords. Hello, biometrics.   Forgetting a password, it’s happened to so many people and it can be very annoying. But this could all soon become a thing of the past as people become more comfortable with new forms of biometrics authentication.   A new Visa survey of 1,000 Americans exploring awareness and perceptions of biometric authentication confirms that consumers continue to have a strong interest in new biometric technologies that make their lives easier.   Among 1,000 Americans surveyed, the findings revealed: More than the 65 percent of consumers are already familiar with biometrics1 86 percent of consumers are interested in using biometrics to verify identity or to make payments 70 percent of consumers believe that biometrics are easier and 46 percent think they are more secure than using passwords or PINs Get the full survey details here.   Curious on how Biometrics works? The Visa Security team takes us behind the scene in the video below.   ... View more

San Francisco? Check.   Miami? Check.   Now, London...check. The Visa Developer Meetup group launched this December for the London dev community at Visa’s new London Innovation Center in Paddington.       The Visa Developer London Meetup event not only gave developers a close look at new payment demos inside the center, but it also introduced some European developers to capabilities offered through the Visa Developer Platform through a live coding session.       The session took the audience through building a Foreign Exchange application from scratch in just 20 minutes. The working application ran on a mobile device, and demonstrated how to take an input currency and return the equivalent amount in a second currency, adding in exchange pricing set by the user. The demo used Fuse Tools along with the Foreign Exchange Rate API to demonstrate.     The meet-up was well-attended, with people across the financial services and fintech landscape as well as representatives from merchants present. These developer events are extremely important for us, to ensure that we are able to learn what works and doesn’t from those developers who are actually building new innovations using our APIs.     These developers are on the front lines of new features in some of our favourite banking and merchant apps, so understanding their needs and listening to their feedback directly is invaluable to us.   Get the full experience and watch the Meetup video below. Make sure to join the Visa Developer London Meetup group here to get first dibs on the next developer event in Europe.   ... View more

The Visa Developer Meetup is launching in a city near you.   Following the successful launch of the Visa Developer Meetup in San Francisco last summer, the Visa Developer team hit the road to bring this engaging event to developers in the Miami community this November.     Developer Meetups create an additional channel for the Visa Developer product and technology teams to connect with external developers and innovators who are at the forefront of digital disruption and open dialogue on developing the next wave of innovative platforms and products.     The Miami Meetup took place at one of Visa’s global Innovation Center, which sits inside Visa’s Latin American and Caribbean Headquarters in Miami, Florida.     Developers had a chance to ask a panel of Visa leaders questions on the future of the Visa Platform and how Visa engages with Fintech startups.       The panel session was followed by developer demos including one from The Silverlogic Team, the winner of  the Visa Challenge at the Money 20/20 Hackathon.   The team showed how they used Visa APIs that enables peers to share parking spots to fulfill high parking demand in urban areas with excess supply of residential parking spots while allowing merchants to attract  customers by sponsoring parking spots.    Developers from Matrix Labs also demoed “Visa Concierge” which uses the Matrix Creator as a hotel voice assistant payment processing via Visa Checkout.   More pictures and information on how to join the next developer Meetup in Miami on the Visa Developer Miami Meetup group page.   ... View more

When it comes to mobile applications, the question, and subsequent heated debate, of whether to have a hybrid app or a native app arises.   Written by: Navendu Chandra, Sr. Director, Visa Developer Platform   Vincent Hessner, Manager, Visa Checkout iOS SDK     Hybrid vs. Native    The biases on this topic are entirely understandable. For developers, this question is occupationally existential. For others, many variables like the long-term strategy of the product, retention, and marketing have to be part of the conversation. Much of the debate has been laid out in the blogosphere already, and covering every single point would take much more than a single article.   In a gross overgeneralization, the pros and cons of each ecosystem usually end up in a battle of cost vs quality. Cost here refers to all types of effort, such as developer salaries, talent, development speed, maintainability, etc., and quality usually refers to a responsive UI and hardware interactivity.   With over 2.5Bn smartphone users and an estimated 150Bn app installs in 2016 alone, just like the answer for iOS vs Android, the answer to Hybrid vs. Native is: “Need to build what the customers want, and more importantly use”.   Hybrid Apps   Hybrid mobile apps merge two development platforms into one. The UI and most of the features will be developed as a webpage. However, since you can’t submit a webpage to an App Store, you write a lightweight native app to simply display the webpage within the native app.   Regardless of the reasons for choosing one stack over the other, for the retailers enabling mobile commerce, there is an uptick in investments towards hybrid. At Visa Checkout, we’ve seen an increase of merchants using hybrid apps and all needed an SDK that works well with their hybrid apps. Unfortunately, we lose one of the most important user features of Visa Checkout. Surprisingly, a very crucial feature for using Visa Checkout to make a purchase is biometric login (fingerprint and facial recognition authentication). Why? Well, users simply want to make purchases fast. They want to choose something to buy, double check they’re using the right payment method, and then be done. That’s it.   The last thing users want to do is fumble through their long-term memory and sift through all the passwords they’ve ever created for the right one. We have the data that proves that users experiencing too much friction during the purchase will impatiently give up and never purchase your products! And we don’t blame them.   As a solution, we’ve added hardware capabilities to accompany hybrid apps called the Visa Checkout Hybrid Plugin. One of the disadvantages of hybrid apps is the hardware interaction, but the Hybrid Plugin allows fingerprint and facial authentication so the user doesn’t have to remember their password. In the future, this plugin could also provide other device support, such as camera access for reading your card number when adding a new payment card.   The road ahead   The digital transformation has been a boon to both businesses and consumers, making commerce easier, faster, and more accessible. The unprecedented rate of innovation and consumers frequent digital experiences keep raising the bar for customer adoption and delight. All the mobile platforms and digital ecosystems are making significant investments in biometrics in order to further eliminate friction and provide for delightful end user experiences.   As was the case with mobile banking, the adoption for these new technologies and features take time for mass user adoption.         A recent study by Forrester, shows that 39% of the market is ready for new technology and eager to try new experiences, with another 32% ready to adopt close behind if the technology proves worthwhile. Although people are hardwired to resist new things, when they are offered a low-risk improvement, they are more likely to adopt it.   With over 600 million transactions in 2016, Juniper anticipates that number to more than triple, with an estimated 2 billion transactions in 2017. You can read more about the Biometrics in payments here.         Staying ahead of the curve, Visa is making several investments in integrating and enabling technologies around fingerprint recognition, facial recognition, voice recognition and other forms of biometrics. By the year 2020, Mercator expects majority of the users in the US utilizing biometrics security on their smartphones.   Learn more about these capabilities biometrics to enable easier, safer and faster payment experiences by visiting: https://developer.visa.com/site/visaidintelligenc ... View more