The globally renowned credit card giant, Visa has launched the first pilot phase of B2B Connect, its blockchain-based business-to-business payments service. This initiative comes right after the announcement by Mastercard, who filed a patent for its own instant blockchain payments solution.
The service was announced by Visa back in 2016. Since then, the company has been developing this payment service with the assistance of blockchain startup Chain. The platform aims to ease cross-border payments by facilitating direct payments between institutions, cutting out the middleman the industry currently relies on. In addition, B2B Connect is specifically designed to ensure secure, yet transparent payments between enterprises.Blockchain system is becoming popular due to its ability to prevent the execution of the false transaction. It has become an automated system to update records and verify transactions. The system works without a need for human intervention. The transparency of this system is attracting big enterprises to adapt to this system.According to Visa’s global head of solutions, Kevin Phalen,“This week’s announcement is just the first step as we work towards a commercial launch of Visa B2B Connect. We are beginning to process bank-to-bank test transactions with select clients. Additional banks, including corporates, will follow soon.”Visa has already partnered with leading banks like U.S.-based Commerce Bank, South Korea’s Shinhan Bank, the Union Bank of Philippines and the United Overseas Bank, based in Singapore, to work on this project.The existing partners of Visa and as well as the future ones will be able to use the company’s application programming interface (API), in order to create their own platforms. The phase 2 of the project will initiate a commercial launch expected in mid of 2018, after the accomplishment of the first phase.