Visa has announced that the Visa Acceptance Platform is now hosted on local cloud infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, marking the first implementation of its kind by Visa.
The move is in line with the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) mandate.
The development means that businesses in Saudi Arabia will be able to accept payments more quickly and securely on CyberSource, a Visa Acceptance Platform service, through a single integration.
According to Visa, this will support the Kingdom’s efforts under Vision 2030 to strengthen its digital economy.
The platform accommodates a range of transaction types widely used in modern commerce, including authorisation followed by capture, card on file, and recurring payments for mada cards.
These will become available once Visa completes certification with the new eCommerce payments interface launched by SAMA.
Merchants, payment service providers, and acquirers in Saudi Arabia will also be able to enable digital wallet recurring transactions.
“Hosting the Visa Acceptance Platform locally underscores the continued investment in our payments infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and reflects our commitment to innovating new ways to better serve our local merchant partners,”
said Ali Bailoun, Visa’s Regional General Manager for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman.
“With Saudi Arabia already reaching 79% non cash transactions, Visa’s expanded local payments infrastructure will help drive the next phase of growth to support Vision 2030’s digital economy ambitions.”
The Visa Acceptance Platform is currently used by more than 450 payment service providers and connects to over 100 independent software vendors.
Each month, it supports over 450,000 active merchants across 160 countries, operating in 50 currencies.
“Once integrated with the new eCommerce payments interface, the Visa Acceptance Platform will be able to give banks, PSPs and merchants faster, more reliable, and fully compliant payment processing,”
said Rob Cameron, Global Head of Acceptance Solutions at Visa.
“Merchants will be able to boost approval rates, offer mada and digital wallets for recurring and one off payments, and deliver a smoother checkout for consumers.”
Visa stated that these changes demonstrate its role in supporting the Kingdom’s digital economy by providing merchants with secure and adaptable payment infrastructure.
Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Middle East, based on image by rawpixel.com via Freepik
