Visa Selects Startups for Accelerator Program in Asia Pacific

Visa has selected seven startups for its 2023 Visa Accelerator Program in Asia Pacific.

Selected from among 450 applicants, the seven startups are Dowsure (Mainland China), Doxa Holdings (Singapore), Kadmos (Germany), Pi-xcels (Singapore), Playbux (Thailand), Transpure (India) and Twid (India), Visa said in a Tuesday (May 16) press release.

“The Visa Accelerator Program offers selected startups a path to rapid commercialization,” Kunal Chatterjee, head of innovation for Asia Pacific at Visa, said in the release.

The startups selected for the latest cohort will work on solutions in Web3, global money movement, embedded finance, merchant and small business enablers, and open banking, according to the release.

They will collaborate with Visa experts over six months to test and iterate their solutions and validate them against commercial opportunities, the release said.

The Visa Accelerator Program is now in its third year, with previous cohorts having been selected in 2021 and 2022, according to the program’s web page.

“Our collaboration with past cohorts of startups has yielded multiple commercial partnerships, joint intellectual property (IP) creation and new product developments with Visa and our clients in Asia Pacific,” Chatterjee said in the press release. “Success in payments requires strong collaboration, and Visa is committed to partnering with and investing in startups that share our vision to build new digital commerce experiences.”

This program is one of several ways in which Visa is reaching out to FinTech founders and others who are growing businesses.

For example, in January, Visa partnered with Fintech District to help expand the FinTech ecosystem in Italy.

Fintech District, a community of national and international stakeholders in the Italian FinTech ecosystem, aims to help both Italian startups and new entrants from abroad by encouraging the sharing of best practices, partnerships around technology, access to international capital and communication with relevant parties in other countries.

When announcing the partnership in January, Visa Southern Europe Head of FinTech Eva Ruiz Cendon said: “The partnership with Fintech District will allow us to further expand our network in Italy, giving us the opportunity to tighten our ties to the Italian FinTech scene and to do our part to contribute to the growth of the sector.”