Payments

Visa introduces cloud-based payment acceptance

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January 13, 2022

Visa has introduced a platform, Visa Acceptance Cloud, to improve the way businesses accept payments from their customers, according to a press release.

Following the success of the company's "tap to phone" solution, VAC will let acquirers, payment service providers, point of sale manufacturers and Internet of Things players move payment processing software from being embedded in each hardware device to being universally accessible in the cloud.

Already live across six geographies, VAC will help innovators transform almost any device into a cloud-connected payment terminal, while providing cloud-based software updates, analytics and network services from Visa. Since VAC runs on Visa's data centers, it also offers leading data security capabilities.

In January 2020, Visa first showcased the power of "tap to phone," a solution that transforms current generation Android smartphones and tablets into contactless point-of-sale terminals. Tap to Phone was Visa's first offering that let sellers accept payments on the devices they already own, just by downloading an app. As of December 2021, there were more than 300,000 devices across 54 countries using Tap to Phone.

Expanding beyond phones, Visa Acceptance Cloud enables any POS or connected device to seamlessly accept payments and to incorporate a range of added services, including buy now, pay later, fraud management, Rapid Seller Onboarding and adata analytics. The ongoing pilots in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia cater to a variety of use cases, including retailers and restaurants in Australia through Visa's work with U.S.-based fintech, Bleu, NOBAL Technologies' smart mirror and public trains in Brazil.