Visa (V 0.33%) and PayPal Holdings (PYPL 0.64%) are enhancing their existing partnership, in a move that promises to make a wide variety of money transfers quick and relatively straightforward.
The two companies announced in a press release that, thanks to this expansion, several means of transfer would either be made available or enhanced. Among these is the payment card giant's Visa Direct service, under which eligible PayPal users will be able to instantly send and receive funds to Visa-branded cards within the Direct system. This can be effected through numerous third-party platforms, including Venmo and Xoom.
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This expansion also addresses some of the financial needs of small merchants. Visa and PayPal said that the widened scope of their arrangement now allows merchants using not only PayPal, but also Braintree, iZettle, and Hyperwallet to make similar instant transfers.
Visa and PayPal said these new functionalities are to be rolled out over the coming months. They did not get any more specific.
The announcement comes at an appropriate time given the snowballing growth of digital payments during the coronavirus pandemic, which has eliminated many in-person transactions across the global economy. The two companies said that Visa Direct's number of transactions rose by nearly 80% in the U.S. in the company's third quarter.
Visa and PayPal believe this isn't only a temporary shift. "While the global pandemic has dramatically accelerated the shift to digital, we see this move to digital as a long-term change that will outlast the pandemic," they quoted PayPal's senior vice president of omni payments Jim Magats as saying.
