Worldline and Visa Partner on Virtual Card Issuing Solution

Worldline has partnered with Visa to launch a virtual card issuing solution focused on the online travel agency (OTA) market.

With access to this dedicated B2B virtual card program, OTAs will be able to pay suppliers more quickly and securely, the companies said in a Tuesday (May 14) press release.

“[This partnership] will transform the way online travel agencies handle payments by offering a unified solution that combines payment performance and cost effectiveness,” Guillaume Tournand, vice president of growth at Worldline Merchant Services, said in the release.

With this collaboration, Worldline, a global provider of payment processing services, moves into direct card issuance for the first time, according to the release.

The partnership brings together the acceptance networks and seamless payouts of Worldline and Visa to enhance the online travel sector’s payments infrastructure, the release said.

By bringing together joint acceptance and card issuing, the solution enabled by this partnership will help OTAs manage and optimize cash flows and reduce operational frictions, per the release.

“At Visa, we obsess about working with partners to deliver innovative, secure and reliable payment solutions,” Ed Chandler, senior vice president, Visa Commercial and Money Movement Solutions, said in the release. “We are excited to partner with Worldline, to streamline, unify and enhance how online travel agencies are paid and pay their supplier seamlessly.”

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that by embracing virtual cards, companies could mitigate their accounts receivable (AR) uncertainty.

Currently, 79% of larger firms and 60% of smaller firms receive payments through virtual cards, according to “The 2024 Certainty Project: Optimizing AR to Mitigate Uncertainty for Middle-Market Businesses,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Previse collaboration.

In another recent development in this space, Expensify said Monday (May 13) that it added unlimited virtual cards to its spend management platform.

The new Expensify Visa Commercial Card enables businesses to manage all their expenses across employees and merchants, including both one-time and recurring expenses. It allows customers to set fixed or monthly spend limits for each card and to name their virtual cards so that it’s easy to assign them to specific accounts and gain a clear overview of expenses within the Expensify platform.