The service was activated for the first time by Russia's “1st Processing Bank” and Ukraine's largest bank, “PrivatBank” earlier this week.
Visa is in the process of rolling the service out internationally, with a view to capturing market share from PayPal, and other emerging mobile remittance platforms.
Using the new service is simple. Senders provide their bank with the recipient's Visa card number to initiate the payment. Visa says the process does away with the need for senders to fill out complicated forms and provide routing information such as bank codes and branch addresses.
When processed through VisaNet, funds are credited directly to the eligible Visa credit, debit or prepaid account within minutes, freeing recipients from having to visit agent locations to collect cash.
Vikram Modi, Head of Digital Money Transfer and Personal Payments for Visa’s international markets, said that this milestone for Visa in Russia and Ukraine is only the beginning of a new wave of personal payment services on Visa cards – including person-to-person payments, mobile money transfer, electronic bill pay, prepaid reloads and intra-account transfers.