SMART e-Money Inc., the digital money unit of Smart Communications, has bagged an issuing and acquiring license from global payments giant Visa, a statement showed.
This means Smart e-Money will be allowed to issue Visa-branded prepaid cards, acquire merchant transactions, and offer Visa Direct products and services for domestic and international money transfers.
Smart e-Money is the first non-financial institution in Southeast Asia to receive such a license, the company said in the statement.
“Having the biggest consumer base in the Philippines, we are in a very strategic position to roll out various innovative financial payments products and services; and a number of them will be out this year,” Manuel V. Pangilinan, chair of Smart and parent firm Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., said in the statement.
“Digital is the new normal and mobile becomes the core of our everyday lives,” Pangilinan added.
The move is in step with recent moves by PLDT to widen its presence in the e-commerce space.
PLDT earlier invested in the Berlin-based Rocket Internet last year on top of a joint venture partnership to deploy mobile commerce in selected growth and emerging markets with PayMaya as the vehicle.
“With a large customer base and a strong presence across the country, we are pleased to partner with Smart to bring the benefits of electronic payments to even more Filipinos,” Stuart Tomlinson, Visa country manager for Philippines and Guam, said in the same statement.
The first product to be launched in partnership with Visa is Charge2Phone or C2P which is the country’s first contactless payment sticker using near-field communication (NFC).
This product was launched in partnership with Citi, the country’s biggest foreign bank. C2P also offers added convenience to its customers who can use their 11-digit mobile number for online purchases at the checkout page instead of the usual 16-digit credit card number.
“This is just the beginning of more things to come as we unveil a number of digital financial innovations not only in the Philippines but in other select markets,” said Orlando Vea, president and CEO of Smart e-Money and Voyager Innovations and chief wireless adviser at Smart.