Standard Chartered has announced its partnership with Visa in order to optimise cross-border payments, as it joined the Visa B2B Connect network. Following this announcement, in addition to its participation in the Visa B2B Connect multilateral payment network, Standard Chartered also joined the company as a new settlement partner.

Both financial institutions will focus on meeting the needs, preferences, and demands of customers in an ever-evolving market, while also prioritising the process of remaining compliant with the regulatory requirements and laws of the industry. More information on the partnership The Visa B2B Connect represents a multilateral payment network that was developed in order to enable faster, frictionless, and secure account-to-account (A2A) cross-border payments for its customers and corporate clients. The network was launched for users of Standard Chartered Singapore, with more entities being expected to be added in the following months.

The solution is expected to expand and optimise the financial institution’s existing suite of payment services, with a priority set on facilitating faster and more cost-effective business-to-business (B2B) transactions across borders and markets. Through the use of the Application Programming Interface (API) connectivity between Standard Chartered and the Visa B2B Connect, transactions and payments are set to be routed directly and safely to Visa for further processing. This will remove multiple intermediaries and the overall associated costs and delays.

The solution was developed upon Visa’s extensive global network in order to offer multilateral connectivity to all members through a single connection, with transparent timeframes and costs, as well as the possibility to access predictability and cost-effectiveness opportunities. In addition, the bank will act as one of Visa’s settlement partners within the network. Standard Chartered is expected to facilitate payment flows, including settlement accounts, FX capabilities, and funds movement.

At the same time, it will provide Visa with the ability to extend additional settlement currencies and locations to partner banks, while also offering its API solution in order to further support the network design. This process is expected to give network participants the opportunity to benefit from the transparency of their transaction status at any point in time by facilitating payment and auto reconciliation. Standard Chartered is the settlement bank for the VISA B2B Currect network in the UAE, while also representing the settlement bank for Singapore.

Its FX liquidity capabilities and presence will allow payments initiated in SGD and AED, as well as other settlement currencies, to be delivered to up to 100 global currencies in order to further optimise Visa’s network and overall customer experience. .