Visa and Bluefin Put Payment Security Inside the Acceptance Stack

Visa has launched a partnership with payment and data security infrastructure firm Bluefin.

This collaboration has yielded a new card-present acceptance offering that combines Visa’s global payment capabilities and Bluefin’s security infrastructure, the companies announced Tuesday (Aug. 25).

“Enterprise organizations are no longer looking for individual payment technologies – they’re looking for infrastructure that enables secure commerce across every channel,” Ruston Miles, Bluefin’s founder and chief strategy officer, said in a news release.

“Our collaboration with Visa Acceptance Solutions reflects a shared vision that secure payment acceptance should be delivered as an integrated platform rather than a collection of independent components. By combining Visa Acceptance Solutions with Bluefin’s card-present security infrastructure, we’re helping organizations simplify deployment, reduce complexity, and build a stronger foundation for the future of enterprise commerce.”

According to the announcement, the collaboration combines payment acceptance, PCI-validated security, tokenization, device lifecycle management, and enterprise payment infrastructure into one solution.

Bluefin offers its PCI-validated point-to-point encryption (P2PE) solution, secure decryption services, certified payment application, terminal integration, and P2PE Manager, while Visa Acceptance Solutions brings payment processing, tokenization, and global payment services through a unified architecture.

“Organizations can deploy secure in-person payment acceptance without having to integrate multiple payment, security, and device management technologies independently,” the release added. “The offering is available to merchants and software providers through Visa Acceptance Solutions and Visa’s global sales and partner channels, providing organizations with a streamlined path to deploy secure, enterprise-grade card-present acceptance.”

PYMNTS Intelligence collaborated with Visa Acceptance Solutions on the recent report “Global Digital Shopping Index: U.S. Playbook, The New American Shopper.” Research from that report shows that payment acceptance now influences merchant choice for 65% of U.S. shoppers, up from 58% in January 2023 and 59% in January 2024.

The implications of this finding “extend beyond the 7-percentage-point increase,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this week.

“Payment preference carries particular weight among consumers who are already among the most active digital shoppers,” the report said. “That puts acceptance closer to the decisions merchants make about attracting and retaining valuable customers, rather than treating it solely as a checkout function.”

AI shoppers offer the clearest example, the report added. Among consumers who used artificial intelligence for their most recent purchase, 78% said acceptance of their preferred payment method strongly influenced where they shop, compared to 40% for non-AI users.