The launch of Visa Developer transformed the San Francisco-basedVisa's payments network to an open platform, allowing access toonline and mobile person-to-person capabilities, accountholderidentification and Visa Checkout.

Other services now open to development include currencyconversion and consumer transaction alerts. Visa plans to provideaccess to more payment capabilities over the next year.

“As the leader in payments we have an opportunity to transformglobal commerce by opening-up access to our global network andsupporting our clients, industry partners and innovators in theirpursuit of creating new, easier and more secure ways to pay,” VisaCEO Charlie Scharf said. “Visa Developer represents not only a newaccess point to our network, but a new distribution platform forVisa products and services globally.”

Over the past few months, Visa revealed, financial institutions,technology companies and start-ups participated in beta trials ofthe new developer platform and many already created prototypeapplications using Visa technology. Trial partners included CapitalOne, CIBC, Emirates NBD, National Australia Bank, RBC, TD Bank,Scotiabank, TSYS, U.S. Bank and VenueNext.

The new platform is part of a multi-year initiative to transformVisa's payment products and services into application programminginterfaces. This could allow financial institutions to bring products and services to mobile andonline clients at a much faster pace.

Visa's global developer program includes:

• A globally accessible developer portal and a way to searchVisa's suite of payment products and services.
• An open platform that provides access to hundreds of Visa APIsand software development kits for some of Visa's most popularpayment products and capabilities.
• A testing sandbox that offers application developers aplug-and-play experience, as well as access to Visa test data.
• Access to Visa Developer engagement centers designed to fostercollaboration and co-creation with application developers in keymarkets like San Francisco, Dubai, Singapore, Miami and SãoPaolo.

“We are unbundling Visa's full suite of products and servicesand giving developers open access to the underlying paymentcapabilities,” Visa EVP of Technology Rajat Taneja said. “Webelieve this will lead to the creation of entirely new commerceexperiences with Visa technology integrated to enable greatersecurity, scale and convenience when it comes time to pay. When youadd the ability to distribute those new experiences across Visa'sglobal network, you can see why Visa Developer will become thepreferred playground for developers everywhere.”