Visa Developer Community

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

Mom and pop. Brick and mortar. The local shop. These are some of the many names small businesses go by, but there is definitely nothing small about how many have opened shop in the United States.   There are an estimated 28 million small businesses in the US, outnumbering corporations 1508 to 1. However, over 50% of those won’t make it past year 5. Visa and U.S. Bank want to change that and partnered up to host the Hack Big for Small Business Hackathon in Atlanta over the weekend.       “Small Businesses are the backbone of the US economy.  At Visa, we are working on understanding pain points that Small Business owners face on a daily basis and where possible, using technology to help alleviate them,” said Kaushal Mehta, Sr. Director of Small Business Product and Initiatives at Visa.     The Hackathon challenged developers to reimagine how small businesses operate in areas like staffing, supplier relations, inventory management, payments and costs of goods.   “The biggest challenge for Small Businesses is just time. Being able to find time throughout the day, because they are wearing so many different hats and doing so many different functions. Anything that allows them to more efficiently and effectively run their business, that’s the win. A win for them and a win for us,” said Craig Hodnett, Sr. VP, RPS Small Business Card Product Team at U.S. Bank.   Using U.S. Bank and Visa APIs along with third party APIs, we tasked attendees to build solutions that help small business owners better manage things such as their inventory procurement and management process – staying on top of quantity, costs and any incentives that may benefit their business.    121 developers, designers and innovators lined up early Saturday morning at the Atlanta Tech Village with the hopes of landing a hackathon cash prize: $7K for 1 st place, $5K for 2 nd place & $3K for 3 rd place.   Visa also provided an additional $3K for the team who best used Visa APIs.     Day one was all about ideation, team formation and setting the foundation for small business solutions. 18 brave souls pitched their idea on stage in hopes of forming the perfect team. Ideas ranged from automated kiosks for quicker payments to platforms that project how much payments would  be for payroll. Once idea pitches wrapped up, attendees networked and grouped off in their corners to start building.    Attendees were then given technical overviews of the APIs available from U.S. Bank as well as the Visa Developer Platform. The capabilities offered, would be the driver to bring their demos to life.     U.S. Bank offered several APIs. Some included data on transaction history, current balance of accounts, and location details on U.S. Bank branches or ATMs.   The Visa Developer APIs highlighted were Visa Supplier Matching Service, Visa Queue Insights, Merchant Measurement, Merchant Search and  Locator. Developers weren’t limited to those, they had the option to explore all APIs.          By Sunday morning, 19 teams were on the list to demo their final product. They had three minutes to pitch their ideas, with judges getting 1 minute to ask questions.             After much deliberation, the winners of the Hack Big for Small Business are:    1st Prize - Big Data 4 Small Business    Small Businesses lack the capability to access data about their customer interactions.  They struggle to understand what is driving the purchasing behavior?  What is not impacting these behaviors? Small Business need the same customer analytics that Big Businesses have, allowing them adapt to unknown factors affecting their operational execution and customer experiences. The hack offers merchant-defined enrichment promoting analytics tailored to the merchant with local and industry comparisons.    This team also took home the Visa Special Prize for best use of Visa APIs.       2nd Prize - Visa PODS   The solution is a plug-in for your browser that intercepts the payment transaction before it is completed. Allowing the manager to make an effective business decision.       3rd Prize - Invendors    The team built an app that automates when you should order supplies and resudces the cost by combining your order for an item with another bulk-buyer, the price that both of you pays will drop.          Watch all the action of the weekend in the video here.   ... View more

CJ Dubash   Visa IoT Product Manager CJ Dubash is a Product Manager focused on the Smart City space on the Internet of Things team based in San Francisco. CJ joins Visa after recently completing his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley .  During this Smart City webinar you will learn more on Visa's vision with payments and connected devices, and how IoT solutions can create a better customer experience.       Reimagine a more seamless, digital experience for cardholders. Learn how IoT will unlock new opportunities across the Smart City of Tomorrow.   The webinar will cover:   1. Overview of the IoT Landscape 2. Visa’s POV on Smart Cities 3. Smart City Hot Topics.   ... View more

The Visa B2B Connect Product has been available for developers through trial APIs and this week the product took one  step closer to commercial availability.   Visa B2B Connect APIs are now processing   bank to-bank test transactions with a few partners, others to follow soon.  Partners include  innovators from Commerce Bank in the United States, Shinhan Bank in South Korea, Union Bank of Philippines and United Overseas Bank in Singapore.    The platform, which was first announced last year runs by working with Chain to build Visa B2B Connect using Chain Core, an enterprise blockchain infrastructure that facilitates financial transactions on scalable, private blockchain networks. Building on this technology, Visa is developing a new near real-time transaction system designed for the exchange of high-value international payments between participating banks on behalf of their corporate clients. Managed by Visa end-to-end, Visa B2B Connect will facilitate a consistent process to manage settlement through Visa’s standard practices.   The product was designed with an “API-first” strategy as it aims to harness the power of the global developer community to enable a smarter cross-border B2B payments flow.   For developers interested in learning more, click here and test away.    Read more on the B2B Connect announcement here.  ... View more

  This October, 95 teams competed in the Money 20/20 Hackathon. 36 of these teams committed to building with Visa API s , addressing Visa’s challenge of re-imagining the Smart City of Tomorrow. Each sponsor was tasked to choose two teams to move to the final round. Team Switch impressed the Visa judges and landed one of the two coveted spots.   The team of four are no strangers to hackathons ; Switch won the MIT Fintech Hackathon in 2016. This prompted Visa to extend an invite to Switch to compete in Las Vegas for Money 20/20. Good thing they did, as the team not only moved on two be Visa Challenge Runner Up but landed a spot in the Top 10 Overall Money 20/20 Hackathon Winner spot (taking home $5K).   Team Switch is actually a startup based in NYC. We sat down with the team to learn more about their startup, hackathon idea , and what’s next.   What is Switch Benefits?   We have been working on Switch since we were in grad school at Cornell Tech . We decided to take a look at how we can use and customize existing financial products, such as different types of lending , credit , or insurance products, to better fit the needs of the freelance economy. By freelance economy, we are referring to people who primarily , or in some significant form , earn income through a number of online marketplaces. We conducted research into the problems , opportunities , and challenges faced by this demographic and isolated a few problem areas that we have been working on.   We are building out a product that enables freelancers to have better management over their income by using contextual information from the marketplace they work on . We are going to connect with them with custom financial products and service partners that we hope to work with in the near future.           Where did the idea for Switch come from?   In the fall of 2016 we were working on a research project and the research highlighted challenges related to income volatility and the cost of self- insurance faced by freelances. The way that evolved into a specific product was an evolution of continued research and costumer discovery that identified invoice factoring as potential starting point for us to go-to-market.   Then we progressed to identify a platform based approach where we are transacting with people who earn money on specific gig economy marketplaces. The marketplaces take care of invoicing and collections, allowing us to be efficient.   How did you tie it in to the Smart City challenge?   For the Hackathon, what we built and what we adapted our overall vision of the company was a broader understanding of income sources in the future. W hen you look at smart cities you’re not simply looking at smarter infrastructure but also at how the smart infrastructure enables different income sources or highlights income sources that today might be a very small percentage of people’s income in a much bigger way. When you have greater automation, self-driving cars, robots, drones and things of that nature, you are going to have people relying on a whole different suite of sources of income .   W hat we demoed at the hackathon included revenue from home sharing and car sharing that in the future when everyone’s cars are being used in a wider network and function as taxis when they are not in use , will contribute more substantially to an income mix or w hen you look at renewable energy sources that are tied in to a smart grid that earn money for you. All of these need a better way to be managed and they need much deeper contextual understanding so they can be used to qualify you for a variety of different financial products .     When you read the Visa challenge, was that a natural direction for your established company vision?   It wasn’t directly something we had been thinking about but when we considered a long er term vision of where the company could be , and how the company needs to think about the future, it made a lot more sense. W en you think about the smart city the first thought everyone has is the infrastructure but there is so much more to it . It’s not just expressways , its checkout terminal s, automation, alternative energy sources .   How was the Hackathon experience?   When we started Saturday morning we spent a lot of time trying to get more clarity around the idea. Part of that process involved speaking with the Visa team and their advisers , and their Marqeta team who proved to be a very essential part of our process for the next day.   We didn’t really have any gauge of the others in the hackathon room. We spent time prepar ing and iron ing out what we wanted to demo . Then we spent the rest of the time splitting design work, the pitch, and engineering work between the four of us. We identified where we needed help , whether it was from one of the resources that Visa brought along or the product managers at Marqeta.           What Visa APIs did you and how did that enhance the idea?   We used the Visa Direct API ; we used it in a product demo where we wanted to showcase funds being transferred from a third party financial institution to our customer. The ability of the Visa Direct API to complete the transaction in very efficient and just in time way enabled us to add and support functionality that otherwise wouldn’t have allowed the product to make a lot of sense .   How did the Marqeta APIs help?   The Marqeta APIs were critical to the development of our hackathon demo, and more broadly have given our entire company ’ s product roadmap an overhaul. The product ’ s capabilities allow us to aggregate these various income sources and distribute them to our customers in a seamless way. We can also easily integrate various locks and rules on the account, that enable us to create financial products that are not possible today. We were fortunate to have been able to work so closely with them and are continuing to engage with them to integrate their product into Switch, so we can execute ideas that we had pushed back further in our company ’ s direction.       How did you find the Visa Developer Platform?   The documentation was easy to follow and to understand what tools are available to accomplish tasks. They had an exhaustive set of resources that enable build ing a whole host of functionalit y with respect to payments.   Thoughts on the Visa support on-site?   Visa had support and resources on-site that included designers, engineers, product managers ,   and business heads who we pitched a few ideas to. They   were great sources for   feedback   after which  we went back and iterated on what we were considering. We worked with the Visa team to understand how some of the ideas fit into long term, broader vision  or  plan ,   and what are the things we  need to   consider important.   Such as  what areas   are   opportunities versus risks. Being   heavily  integrated   the payment infrastructure and financial services space, they were able to give us a lot of insight into different opportunities in the market and economy ,   and help us understand what cities of the future  could   look like. How do companies view smart cities, beyond the obvious.         ... View more

Developers brought their coding skills.     The Visa Developer team brought tech, product, UX/UI and marketing support.   Combine all of this and you get winning, hackathon Smart City Solutions.     That is what we saw from developers who competed for the Visa Challenge at the Money 20/20 Hackathon.     This year, Visa challenged developers to re-imagine the cardholder experience, that is totally cashless, for the Smart City of Tomorrow. Developers did not hold back on imaging that future city and pitched innovative ideas that used cutting edge technologies.   95 teams competed in the Money 20/20 Hackathon, each team had the opportunity to choose which sponsor’s technologies to use for their submission. This year, 36 teams committed to building with Visa APIs!     It was 24 hours of coding, coding, caffeine, more coding plus some Twitter Challenges and Drone Races thrown in there by the Visa team to give developers brain breaks.           The biggest challenge for the Visa team was picking one team to take home the Visa Challenge prize ($20K, iPhone X, Xbox One X, Fitbit and invite to Visa Client Cocktail event).    Ideas ranged from solutions that allow customers to pay merchants in messenger with QR codes to POS solutions for restaurants that uses facial recognition.    It wasn’t easy to only choose two. But here they are:   Visa Challenge Winner - OmniPark     Omni Park - 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. The team also went on to win Overall Hackathon Winner for Money 20/20, watch here.      Visa Challenge Runner-up - Switch         Switch - app is an income management and financing application for citizens of smart cities who earn through various income streams. We give users tools to reduce income volatility, increase savings, and finance large purchases easily. The Visa team had a blast meeting developers at Money 20/20 and supporting the creation of innovative projects. Together, Smart City solutions were created. Get to know the team more here.    The Visa team had a blast meeting developers at Money 20/20 and supporting the creation of innovative projects. Together, Smart City solutions were created.   Make sure to watch videos from day 1 and day 2 from the hackathon.  ... View more