Transactions Processing
The Ease of Electrons
VisaNet is the world’s largest retail electronic payments network. It provides a secure, reliable transactions processing infrastructure that enables consumers, merchants, governments, businesses and financial institutions to capitalize on the global shift away from cash and checks to the efficiencies of electronic payment. VisaNet supports a broad range of payment products and services — credit, debit, commercial, prepaid, mobile and money transfer. In addition to processing the transaction itself, VisaNet applies sophisticated risk management applications and delivers information-based services that add value for issuers, merchants, account holders and other partners.
Domestic Processing
With this array of applications and a flexible design, VisaNet can tailor its operation to the specific requirements of individual countries or regions. Domestic processing services enabled by VisaNet serve the distinct needs of financial institutions, governments, businesses, merchants and consumers and provide greater efficiency, transparency, accountability and control. Visa recently announced a joint venture called Visa Processing Services (VPS) that enables Visa to provide multi-currency and multi-language debit, credit and prepaid issuer processing services in Asia Pacific, Latin America, Canada, Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Core Processing
VisaNet authorizes, clears and settles an average of 130 million transactions per day in 200 countries and territories. Operating 1,600 secure endpoints dispersed worldwide, VisaNet connects cardholders with more than 29 million acceptance locations, more than 16,000 financial institutions and more than 1.5 million ATMs.
Continuous Enhancements
To ensure we stay ahead of the growing need for capacity, Visa continuously implements enhancements to its global payment network, including two major system upgrades each year. Each of these carefully choreographed events involves collaborating with thousands of financial institutions, merchants and processors around the world. An average system upgrade requires some 155,000 labor hours and the modification of 100,000 lines of code, creating 50,000 systems changes each year.
