Is this competition for authorizenet?
Visa, Sun, Cisco to form Web payments network
July 19, 2000 02:57 PM
NEW YORK, July 19 (Reuters) - Top credit-card network Visa U.S.A. said on Wednesday it would join with heavyweight network computing company Sun Microsystems Inc. SUNW and leading Internet equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO to form the world's largest private Web-based payments network.
Visa DirectExchange, as the network will be called, will be able to process $60 million in payments in an hour and more than 100 billion transactions a year from U.S.-issued Visa credit and debit cards as well as all other forms of electronic payment, Visa said.
"While we believe cards will continue to be the standard payment method for the foreseeable future, consumers increasingly will be paying with new technologies, such as their mobile phones and personal digital assistants," Carl Pascarella, Visa U.S.A. president and chief executive, said.
"We've built our new payments system to provide banks the infrastructure to handle the unprecedented volume of Visa transactions these new payment technologies will demand," he continued.
The move comes as the number of online purchases is escalating and banks and financial services companies are rushing to control the flood of payments crossing the Internet.
Citigroup Inc. C , the country's biggest financial services company, said on Tuesday it would team up with America Online Inc. AOL , the world's leading Internet services firm, to sell more financial products over the Web and make online payments easier to handle.
Visa's new system has been under development for nearly two years and is based on open technology standards. Sun's platform will allow for a variety of payment types and a high volume of transactions. Cisco's technology will route various types of transactions, Visa said.
Visa and fellow credit card network MasterCard are in court this summer fighting off government allegations that they do not compete with each other and stifle innovation. |
