Visa, ICICI Bank partner to accelerate innovation in fintech ecosystem

Global digital payments giant Visa on Monday said it will collaborate with ICICI Bank for its 'Visa in a Box' programme to accelerate fintech enablement for innovations across digital issuance, lending and prepaid use cases.

The partnership, a statement said, aims to drive digital payments in India and support emerging fintech firms with its network, platform assets and global expertise. 

As part of the programme, fintech partners will have access to ICICI Bank and Visa’s APIs and developer sandbox to build, test and deploy new consumer payment applications, a statement said.

Visa in a Box, the statement said, will offer customers access to a suite of modular capabilities and solutions, such as digital KYC, loyalty solutions and payment gateway facilities, built by Visa and its ecosystem.

“As India becomes one of the epicenters for payment innovation, it is incumbent upon established players to create a collaborative ecosystem for fintechs to help contribute to India’s journey of digital payment adoption,” TR Ramachandran, group country manager for India and South Asia at Visa, said.

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The first partner bank under the programme, ICICI has also released co-branded prepaid cards with three undisclosed fintechs, including a neo bank and ones operating in the areas of business banking and business expense management.

“We believe that this partnership presents us with an opportunity to get innovative solutions for our customers and partners, thereby catering to the growing demand for digital solutions in the country,” Sudipta Roy, head of unsecured assets at ICICI Bank, said.

In January, ICICI Bank launched its own API developer mega portal, which offered over 240 APIs, targeted at fintech companies. The API portal was expected to help developers of potential clients to sign up, create and test applications before going live. This would, in turn, help other businesses, fintech organisations, enterprises and ecommerce startups partner with the bank and co-create solutions that could be deployed at scale.