Wirecard, the global leader in digital finance innovation, announced today that it signed an extension of the strategic partnership agreement with Visa aimed at developing tokenized mobile payments in Romania.
The partnership allows Wirecard to undertake commercialization efforts in Romania for Visa Digital Commerce App (VDCA). The Visa Digital Commerce App is a white-label digital wallet helping banks and other card issuers to offer mobile contactless payment solutions along with value added services such as offering card controls, mobile location confirmation, travel and account balance notifications, and a transaction history to end consumers while saving time and money developing their own applications.
According to the press release, „Wirecard also became the first payments processor in Romania that successfully completed the certification for Visa Token Service (VTS)”– a technology that replaces sensitive cardholder information with a unique digital identifier, thus enabling easy and secure contactless payment with virtual cards as cardholder information is never shared with third parties.
“In today’s world, payments must be quick, safe, simple and omnichannel. Switching from classic cards to mobile payment occurs at a high pace, both globally and in Romania. The VDCA solution that Visa and Wirecard offers to the Romanian market is a perfect answer to this trend and we are delighted to digitize processes together. The solution is easy to integrate into payment ecosystems, VDCA is a powerful tool for banks and other card issuers, that get their clients to the next level in terms of safety and accessibility for payments”, stated Utku Ogrendil, Managing Director of Wirecard Romania.
“Visa and Wirecard already have a track record of collaborating on innovative digital financial solutions in Europe and now we are pleased to announce a partnership that will benefit our Romanian cardholders. As the fundamental shift from plastic to digital is accelerating, Visa’s approach is to enable our clients and partners to create and deploy new commerce experiences that seamlessly incorporate secure digital payments with the same level of reliability, interoperability and security. The tokenization service, allows cardholders to use their phones to pay easily and securely at millions of merchants that accept contactless payments across the globe. We believe tokenization will be a key component in the future of digital payments and we are glad to partner with Wirecard to offer our Romanian customers a new convenient and safe way for their mobile payments”, stated Catalin Cretu, General Manager for Romania, Croatia, Slovenia and Malta, Visa.
Contactless, which is the underlying technology behind mobile payments, has rapidly expanded in Romania in recent years, witnessing the highest growth rate ever recorded for any card product. Contactless has been the main engine of electronic payments growth in Romania in the past three years. While Romania progressed rapidly to be among the top 10 markets globally in terms of contactless penetration, the expansion of the acceptance network, as well as the significant increase in the number of contactless enabled cards and recent launches of NFC mobile wallet solutions have been key pillars supporting this progress.
Visa’s Digital Commerce App, which will be commercialized by Wirecard to expand mobile payments in Romania, is a Visa-hosted white-label digital wallet helping issuers of all sizes to shift from plastic to digital payments, while sparing them the efforts to develop their own digital wallets.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
