Visa (V) Provides Easy Money Transfer Service To Canadians

 | Dec 24, 2019 01:28AM ET

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) , in collaboration with TD Bank, has announced a new service to enable Canadians transfer their money between their Canadian and U.S. accounts.

The service named TD Bank (US) to TD (Canada) Transfer will enable TD's Canadian customers transfer their funds to Canada from their U.S. accounts at TD Bank with speed, convenience and transparency. The service will be provided via Visa's real-time push payments solution named Visa Direct.

This solution enables transfer of funds directly to a bank account or card, often in near real-time. Visa Direct has processed 2 billion transactions in the past year, and drove more than 100% growth.

For Visa, providing this service in Canada is a good business opportunity given the fact that the region generates huge demand for money transfer services. At present, nearly $80 trillion is transferred globally via traditional methods of wire transfers or bank account, which is time consuming and costly.

There is a dire need to replace these age old methods with new age money transfer technology, which provides convenience, security and cost effectiveness. Visa, with its cutting-age technology and a payment modernization strategy, fits the bill here.

The new service will start immediately with 1.5 million Canadians heading to warmer climates during the winter and creating demand for money transfer services. A Visa poll shows that 36% of Canadian snowbirds are frustrated with money matters like moving funds between Canadian and U.S. accounts.

The northbound money movement feature is now easily available for TD Cross-Border Banking customers in Canada. Also, there is no transfer fee for customers sending money from an American personal bank account at TD Bank, to their Canadian-based personal accounts at TD Canada Trust.

Visa remains the forerunner in the payments industry when it comes to innovation and technology, business growth, mergers and acquisitions. These have driven business for the company with payment volumes of $8.4 trillion (as of May 2019) compared with $4.3 trillion for Mastercard Inc. (NYSE:MA) , $1.2 trillion for American Express Co. (NYSE:AXP) and $290 billion for Discover Financial Services (NYSE:DFS) in the same space.

Year to date, the stock, with a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), has gained 41.8% compared with the ’s growth of 45.4%.