Visa’s Canadian Expansion Continues with PayPal Partnership

Visa (NYSE:V) and PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) announced on Wednesday (May 9), an extension of their strategic partnership to Canada that will see them work collaboratively to accelerate the adoption of digital and mobile payments in the country.

The partnership between these two companies will create a seamless experience for end consumers who chose to pay with their Visa card at places that accept PayPal.

It has to be noted that the two companies are already collaborating in the US, Asia Pacific and Europe with Canadian consumers and businesses being the latest to benefit on the partnership.

“This partnership will open new avenues for Visa and PayPal to collaborate to honour consumer choice and provide greater benefits to merchants and issuers,” Stacey Madge, country manager and president of Visa Canada said in the release. “By working together, we will be able to bring more innovative products and enhance payment experiences online, in-app and in store for our joint customers.”

For PayPal, this partnership enables it to leverage Visa Direct which allows end consumers who are Visa cardholders to move funds easily from their PayPal account to an eligible Visa debit card in realtime.

“We are delighted to collaborate and drive greater value for our 6.5 million customers in Canada by offering them more choice in how and where they pay,” shared Paul Parisi, president, PayPal Canada.

The companies announced that the two have agreed to extend their participation in the Visa Digital Enablement Program (VDEP) which provides partners of Visa with access to tokenization technology. This will help expand the use of PayPal to business that accept Visa in physical locations.

Visa has been expanding in Canada in recent months as it seeks to boost the digital adoption and mobile payments in the country.

Case in point, on Tuesday (May 8), the company announced that it was expanding Visa Direct, a real-time push payments platform that allows companies to leverage Visa’s global network that will transform domestic and cross border payments to businesses and consumers in Canada.

In its announcement, Visa  pointed to a report done by Aite Group who estimates that funds disbursements to consumers and small businesses to be approximately C$1.1 trillion opportunity. The study found that 62 percent of consumers and 96 percent of merchants would opt in for real time payment method if there was an option for one.

At the beginning of May, Visa announced a collaboration with TransLink, Metro Vancouver’s transportation authority, to modernize mass transit payments to accelerate seamless commuting through contactless payments.

The company said that it is working to bring open payment transit systems to major cities across Canada. The facility will first launch in Metro Vancouver on May 22 through the Visa Global Transit Solutions program that enables operators to add contactless payments as a fare option.

Lastly, Visa connected with MOBI724 Global Solutions (TSXV:MOS) towards the end of 2017 in a partnership that will provide its clients a suite of integrated loyalty solutions that includes Mobi724’s Card Linked offers and rewards.

Following Wednesday’s announcement, Visa closed the trading day at US$130.84 and was up 0.72 percent over a one-day period. The stock has a strong buy ranking on TipRanks with an analyst target price of $140. Meanwhile, the stock of PayPal closed the trading at $77.01 and was up 1.70 percent. TipRanks has a moderate buy ranking of the stock with an analyst target price of $86.85.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Bala Yogesh, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.