PayPal, Visa Extend Partnership to APAC

On Tuesday (April 4), Visa and leading payment facilitator PayPal announced an expansion of a strategic partnership they entered into in the U.S. last summer.

The partnership is an agreement to work jointly to grow the adoption of mobile and digital payments. This latest agreement covers the Asia Pacific region.

As was the case in the U.S., the APAC partnership includes PayPal’s use of the Visa’s Digital Enablement Program (VDEP), which gives PayPal access to Visa’s tokenization technology. This enables PayPal users to conduct secure transactions at point-of-sale locations where Visa is accepted.

The agreement also makes it easier for Visa cardholders to conduct transactions online at retailers that accept PayPal, Visa said.

“We could not be more proud of our extended partnership agreement with Visa in the Asia Pacific markets,” said Dr. Rohan Mahadevan, senior vice president for PayPal Asia Pacific, in a press release. “This is a strong signal that our decision to partner in 2016 was the right thing to do for PayPal, Visa and our millions of merchants and consumers in this region. We look forward to partnering with Visa to offer more choice and better experiences together online, in app and in store within Asia Pacific.”

In addition to the Visa agreement last summer, PayPal announced a similar agreement with Mastercard in the U.S. in September.

Rick Oglesby, Double Diamond Group partner and principal of AZ Payments Group, told PaymentFacilitator.com at that time that PayPal’s agreements with the card networks signaled an interest in working together, rather than in competition, to enable growth within the digital economy.