Jack Henry Adds Visa Direct to Rapid Transfer Offering

FinTech Jack Henry has launched a collaboration with payments giant Visa.

The new partnership allows Jack Henry to offer Visa’s Visa Direct service through its Jack Henry Rapid Transfers offering, the company said in a Monday (Feb. 3) news release

The addition of Visa Direct, which facilitates the delivery of funds directly to eligible cards, bank accounts, and wallets around the world, is part of Jack Henry’s partnership with digital payments processor Moov announced last fall.

“The inclusion of Visa Direct represents a significant milestone in our ongoing efforts to modernize digital payments,” Jack Henry CEO and President Greg Adelson said.

“This is the first phase of our work with Moov that will be closely followed by our cloud-native merchant acquiring solution. Together, these services will enable community and regional financial institutions to offer innovative digital payments solutions, attract and deepen relationships, and grow deposits.”

Offered only through financial institutions, Jack Henry Rapid Transfers is a cloud-native service providing real-time account-to-account money movement using the Visa Direct network. Once implemented, the service will allow for real-time account transfers, as well as quick access to funds for unexpected expenses, travel or urgent payments, the release added.

Visa announced late last year that Visa Direct would make funds available within one minute  and therefore in real time.

“The announcement, where that functionality will be available starting in April of next year, underscores the fact that the payment networks — Visa and Mastercard — have been making strides to move their networks beyond cards, and facilitating payments, toward payouts (in use cases including government disbursements and earned wage access, among others) underpinned by globally trusted infrastructure,” PYMNTS wrote soon after.

That infrastructure, that report added, also serves as the clearing and settlement services for the transactions themselves, ensuring funds are available, and so they can be disbursed faster.

Research last year by PYMNTS Intelligence found that more than half of consumers were not aware of pay-by-bank options, or showed some hesitancy about using them.

“In an age where relationships with banks are nearly ubiquitous,” that report said, “the move toward direct account-to-account (A2A) flows should be an intuitive one. But it hasn’t been, at least not yet, though the rise of open banking promises to change that.”

Some of this issue is down to the speed of the transactions. Separate PYMNTS Intelligence research found 50% of consumers deal with up to a weeklong wait for payouts, in stark contrast to the 43% of consumers who prioritize real-time payments.