Visa and GiveCard Partner on Digital Disbursement Programs for Governments

Visa and GiveCard partnered to help nonprofits and government agencies implement digital disbursement programs.

The collaboration will bring together Visa’s prepaid debit cards and GiveCard’s disbursement technology, creating a turnkey solution for state and local governments, school districts and nonprofits, the companies said in a Wednesday (June 25) press release.

GiveCard’s platform helps nonprofits and government agencies disburse and manage money via prepaid funds, according to the release. It supports housing aid, disaster relief, research incentives and other programs while maintaining anti-money laundering (AML) and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) compliance.

“The world is going cashless, and government and nonprofit systems have been working to modernize their payment systems to keep up,” GiveCard co-founder and CEO Lurein Perera said in the release.

Rick Malcolm, head of Visa Government Solutions North America, said in the release that GiveCard’s platform is simple and intuitive and streamlines disbursements.

“Their ability to integrate into government disbursement systems to manage complex and high-volume payments has made them an early success in the public sector, and we look forward to what we can accomplish together for our customers and stakeholders in the government sector,” Malcolm said.

By using digital conduits to get money where it needs to go, governments can track spending, making sure that there’s no leakage in the system and that tax revenues are accounted for, Rajiv Garodia, senior vice president and global head of Visa Government Solutions, told PYMNTS in an interview posted in March 2023.

“When you digitize disbursements, you’re also getting spend into the formal economy,” Garodia said.

Access to financial services broadens, the consumer experience improves, and benefits accrue to the economy, he added.

It was reported in 2021 that one of GiveCard’s early projects was offering prepaid debit cards to help housing-insecure people become more financially stable.

The company’s solution was designed for an increasingly cashless world in which many people would like to offer money to the homeless but aren’t carrying any bills in their wallet, the report said. Its prepaid debit cards aimed to solve this challenge.