Visa expands global transaction processing with facilities in Singapore and United Kingdom

New processing centres designed to meet the growing demand for digital payments around the world

Visa, a global payments technology company, today announced the expansion of transaction processing capabilities in two state-of-the-art data centres in Singapore and the United Kingdom.
The new global processing hubs will increase the speed, resilience and geo-diversity of Visa's infrastructure, while strengthening the company's ability to deliver new and more sophisticated ways to pay in today's hyper-connected global economy.
"Commerce and payments are in the midst of an historic shift from analogue to digital. A growing majority of people around the globe are leaving cash behind and reaching instead for their cards and devices to pay," said Rajat Taneja, executive vice president of technology at Visa.
"With our technology investments in Asia and Europe, we're scaling up our infrastructure to meet the explosive growth in digital and mobile payments, while maintaining the secure, convenient and always-on service that our clients and partners expect," Taneja Added.
According to the statement, the Singapore and UK data centres will complement Visa's existing processing facilities in North America. With four synchronized data centres, Visa's expanded footprint will boost the redundancy and resilience of its infrastructure, minimizing the likelihood of service disruptions to Visa's 16,600 financial institutions, millions of merchant acceptance locations, and 3 billion cards.
Moreover, the two centres are equipped with best-in-class technology, including high-performance hardware and energy-efficient power and cooling infrastructure. Visa plans to start processing global transactions in the two facilities in 2018.
Visa's 10,000 square foot data centre in Singapore is Visa's first transaction processing centre in South-east Asia and will serve clients, cardholders and merchants across the region and in Visa's global network.
"With our new processing facility in Singapore, we're strengthening our ability to meet rising demand for digital payments, while driving the pace of payment innovation across the Asia Pacific region," said Chris Clark, group executive.
The new data centre is Visa's third major investment in Singapore in the last two years. In September 2016, Visa launched the first international campus of Visa University at its headquarters in Singapore. While in April 2016, Visa launched the Singapore Innovation Centre.
"This investment strengthens the sophistication of Visa's business footprint in Singapore and is a testament to Singapore's regional leadership in data management and connectivity," said Mr. Kelvin Wong, assistant managing director of the Singapore Economic Development Board.
On the other hand, in June 2016, Visa Inc. announced the completion of its acquisition of Visa Europe, starting a multi-year process to combine the two companies into a unified global organization with a shared technology platform. This integration brings 3,200 European clients onto VisaNet, Visa's global transaction processing network, and involves a retrofit of Visa's legacy data centre in the UK.
Once fully retrofitted, the 10,000 square foot facility will bring increased operational resilience for clients in the region while accelerating the speed-to-market for new payment innovations in the European market.
"The launch of our state-of-the-art data centre in Europe is a critical milestone, enabling all our clients and partners to take advantage of Visa's global technical resources and assets," said Bill Sheedy, CEO Visa Inc. in Europe.