When it comes to innovation, good collaboration between startups and corporations is key. Startups have the speed and flexibility to develop new solutions while corporations lend their resources, network, deep knowledge, and trusted brands.

e27 dives deep into one program actively pushing for collaborative innovation: The Visa Accelerator Program. This program aims to help startups unlock growth potential and scale across the Asia Pacific region by developing joint solutions that address the biggest opportunities in the payments industry.

Creating partnerships to solve real-world problems in the payments space

At the Visa Accelerator Program, Kunal Chatterjee, Head of Innovation at Visa, Asia Pacific believes it is imperative not only for collaborations to be mutually beneficial to both stakeholders but also to embolden the ecosystem and serve the community. Both parties must align their goals and come up with meaningful solutions that address tangible, real-world challenges.

This is the onus of the Visa Accelerator Program: to come up with innovative ways to help boost the capabilities of the fintech startups so emerging problems brought about by the increasingly digitalised payments ecosystem can be addressed effectively.

Startups in the Visa Accelerator Program get to work with Visa’s payment networks, product architects, and business development teams to jointly develop a proof of concept and a business case pitch. By the end of the program, real-world solutions are launched, implemented by Visa and its clients and partners in Asia Pacific.

Driving growth and scale through Visa’s trusted brand, network, and infrastructure

“The Visa Accelerator Program isn’t developed in a silo. It is a combined effort across many business teams in Asia Pacific to determine where we focus our attention and resources to address some of the biggest opportunities in payments today and create products and solutions that better reflect the needs of our clients in Asia Pacific. On our end, Visa brings to the table our trusted brand, scale of business, and wider connectivity to the payments ecosystem to help the startups fast-track their growth. This is a win-win situation for both Visa and the partner startups,” said Chatterjee.

This is evidenced by the successful partnerships in previous cohorts, such as with Moneytree, a Japan-based startup that joined the program to empower financial institutions with access to wealth, data, and insights. “Collaborating with Visa’s product, design, and sales experts, we jointly solutioned a Minimum Viable Product and rapidly validated market fit utilising Minimal Viable Testing, all within a short span of six months,” explained Paul Chapman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Moneytree.

Another notable partnership Visa built is with TallyKhata, a Bangladesh-based fintech whose goal is to provide small business financing through their merchant platform and data. “The partnership with Visa was very impactful, from the structured approach towards solutioning to client engagement. In six months, we went from a proof-of-concept to a commercially tested product. The access to Visa leadership and product expertise along with client relationships for joint go-to-market helped us establish strong credibility,“ shared Shahadat Khan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of TallyKhata.

Spanning across the Asia Pacific, Visa has also partnered with Cymonz, a New Zealand-based startup poised to simplify international payments by facilitating a centralised end-to-end payment service platform. “Overall, the program has been fantastic. The team at Visa has been very committed and instrumental in making the partnership a success and many doors have been opened by Visa, which created commercial opportunities to help us grow our company in the region,” elaborated Simon Lynch, Founder of Cymonz.

Commercial opportunities, funding, and implementation

The Visa Accelerator Program sets startups up for long-term success well beyond the span of the program.

Chatterjee explained, “In the last two cohorts, we secured nine commercial deals with Visa clients and partners in Asia Pacific. We also entered into six partnerships and commercial agreements. This reflects the value that startups bring into the larger payments ecosystem.”

Visa also enabled the growth of startups by investing into open finance solutions, such as with Brankas and Open.

“There are many other ways that Visa engages with startups throughout the journey and the end point doesn’t necessarily have to be a commercial agreement or investment. After six months, the startups have the option of entering into a post-program engagement model, depending on a range of factors including the outcome of its proof of concept test, as well as business requirements at the time,” added Chatterjee.

One such option is the Visa Fintech Fast Track program, which is designed specifically to get fintechs up and running on the network and making payments at speed and to scale into new markets leveraging the company’s expertise and reach.

Key challenges Visa is looking to address in 2023

In the spirit of fostering stronger corporate-startup partnerships to co-develop solutions for emerging challenges in Asia Pacific, Visa is looking for collaborations with fintech startups to address five key areas: Web 3.0, global money movement, embedded finance, merchant and small business enablers, and open banking.

Chatterjee concluded, “We have seen encouraging early successes and expectations are high as we recruit for the third cohort. We want to continue bringing the best startups across the region into Visa’s payments network and partner up to tackle the most promising opportunities facing digital payments today.”

Visa is looking for partnerships to fully realise the program’s commercial focus and benefits: to co-develop, test, iterate solutions, and validate them against a variety of commercial opportunities that Visa has with its partners from across the region, as well as uncover new potential opportunities.

Applications for the Visa Accelerator Program close on 10 January 2023. Learn more about the program and how to register here: https://www.visa.com.sg/apaccelerator

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Photo by Mikhail Nilov via Pexels

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This article is produced by the e27 team, in partnership with Visa.

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