Visa launches online payments service in Brazil
Visa has launched its online payments service Visa Checkout in Brazil and will be focusing on partnerships with large retailers in the country.
Available in countries such as the US and Australia since last year, Visa Checkout enables consumers to pay for goods online from any connected device, using debit or credit cards issued by Visa or other payment providers.
Visa Checkout requires users to sign in with a single username and password to complete a payment process without leaving the vendor's website or app - this is being promoted as a key advantage over existing alternatives such as PayPal and Brazilian equivalent PagSeguro.
Unlike its competitors, the Visa product is also not geared up for smaller merchants: according to senior vice president for digital solutions at the company Christopher Boncimino, this is not the most interesting e-commerce segment.
"You can have millions of small partner companies, but in e-commerce what is really valuable is the large ticket transactions carried out in the websites of large retailers," Boncimino told Brazilian magazine Exame.
However, when the company announced the Brazil launch, it only mentioned a single partnership with a local retailer, online merchant FutebolCard, which sells tickets to soccer events across 12 Brazilian stadia.
In July, the credit card giant announced it would open an innovation lab in Brazil, intended as an environment to get clients and partners to interact with Visa subject-matter experts, as well as a facility to prototype offerings in payment technology.