Visa has launched a innovation centre at its Paddington headquarters in London to work with financial institutions, merchants and partners in developing the next generation of payment services.
The Visa Innovation Center London is the largest in Visa’s global network – which includes centres in Berlin, Dubai, Miami, San Francisco, Singapore, Sao Paulo and Tel Aviv – and features an immersive environment with practical demonstrations of Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
For example, these include connected car and connected home environments where IoT devices can be used to pay for car insurance or order groceries from a refrigerator.
Visitors will also be able to experience the future of retail using virtual reality to pick their desired seats for an upcoming Formula E race and use biometric authentication to pay for tickets.
Furthermore, fintech developers across Europe will be able to take advantage of the Visa Developer Platform to create new, secure payment methods, selecting from an initial set of Visa payment APIs (Application Program Interfaces) and SDKs (Software Development Kits).
“What makes the approach we take in our innovation centres unique is that they’re all about collaborating with clients to solve real world, consumer pain points or business problems using digital solutions,” said Jim McCarthy, Executive Vice President for Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at Visa.
Rajesh Agrawal, Deputy Mayor of London for Business praised commitment to the capital, saying he is “delighted that Visa is launching this new innovation centre in London, bolstering our flourishing global tech and fintech reputation and proving that London is open to great ideas and innovation”.
The world of digital payments has grown rapidly in recent years, driven by the likes of Apple and Samsung, which recently announced improvements to its Samsung Pay service.
Last year, industry body The Payments Association predicted that the popularity of contactless transactions will cause card payments to overtake cash by 2021 and the Bank of England is currently in the process of rewriting its core payment tech to take into account modern payment trends.
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