New Visa+ P2P Service Goes Live With PayPal, Venmo, Other US Platforms
Visa+, a new way to send and receive peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, is now live with PayPal and Venmo in the US.
As covered by Vixio last year, Visa+ allows users across a range of P2P apps to send money to each other instantly without using a card to bridge between different platforms.
Instead of using a card, Visa+ users must set up a personalised payment address — similar to a social media handle — which is then linked to their PayPal or Venmo.
Visa believes that Visa+ will provide the building blocks for interoperability across the real-time payments landscape in the US, helping to connect the major closed-loop P2P platforms.
Going forward, Visa also said that Current and Western Union will join the scheme, in addition to other business-to-consumer-focused (B2C) platforms.
Spain To Create 'Financial Defence Authority'
The Spanish government has introduced a bill that will create a new Financial Client Defence Authority, in an effort to improve consumer protection and financial inclusion.
The bill is tasked with “creating the independent administrative authority for the defence of financial customers for the out-of-court settlement of disputes between financial institutions and their customers”.
Through the authority, Spanish consumers will now be able to submit their complaints free of charge to a single body.
The bill sets out the objectives and scope of activities of the new authority. It details the entities that may be subject to complaints, including supervised entities, fintechs, crypto-asset service providers and consumer lending services, regardless of which authority supervises them.