Visa, Episode Six and Secupay Partner to Deliver Government Disbursements

Payments infrastructure firm Episode Six (E6) has joined the Visa Ready for Government Disbursements program and teamed up with Secupay to deliver government disbursements in Germany.

This partnership brings together Episode Six’s enterprise-grade card issuance and transaction processing technology, the Visa Ready for Government Disbursements program that facilitates government-to-citizen (G2C) payments, and Secupay’s regulated payment solutions and services, the companies said in a press release emailed to PYMNTS.

Visa Ready for Government Disbursements was created to support an ecosystem in which issuers and technology providers collaborate to deliver “next generation” government disbursement programs, Greg Sheppard, global head, government disbursements, Visa Government Solutions, said in the release.

“Close collaboration among participants in this digital payments ecosystem is integral to its success — as demonstrated between Episode Six and Secupay,” Sheppard said.

By integrating these resources, Secupay will disburse government aid to around 1 million people over the next four years, according to the release. It will do so via cards in both physical and digital forms.

“E6 is the perfect partner as its technology is easy to configure and integrates seamlessly into our existing system, meaning we can make the cards available to many people at pace,” Secupay CEO Hans-Peter Weber said in the release.

This partnership marks Episode Six’s first offering in Germany, according to the release. The company also operates across 40 countries.

“Joining the Visa Ready for Government Disbursements program is testament to our world class technology and capability to meet diverse, specialized and challenging demands with ease and at pace,” Episode Six CEO and Co-founder John Mitchell said in the release.

In another, separate product launch, Visa said Dec. 12 that it will begin enabling faster delivery of funds in a variety of use cases, including disbursing government benefits. In April 2025, the company’s Visa Direct will begin making funds transferred to U.S. bank accounts available within one minute.

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