Visa Checkout’s Massive Expansion

Visa, which in July launched a no-card-number option for online transactions called Visa Checkout, has added several big-name payment processors to extend the reach of the service, according to TechCrunch.

First Data, TSYS, Vantiv, Bank of America Merchant Services and Wells Fargo Merchant Services will now offer Visa Checkout to their own customers, and so will e-commerce platform providers CyberSource, MarketLive and 3DCart. Major retailers including Staples, Pizza Hut, Neiman Marcus and United Airlines, and platforms that include Branding Brand, Moovweb and Skava are already live with the service.

The new partnerships will extend Visa Checkout’s reach to by another 4 million online merchants, the card brand said on Thursday (Aug. 28).

The system, which is similar to MasterCard’s MasterPass, substitutes a username and password for the actual payment card number during online checkout. That means the card number can’t be stolen by malware, either on the customer’s device or the merchant’s point of sale system. The username and password might be stolen and used to make online purchases, but couldn’t be used to create cloned payment cards.

Visa Checkout is essentially a rebranded version of V.Me, the digital wallet that Visa launched in 2013. But with the new name, Visa has specifically avoided calling Visa Checkout a wallet, according to Visa SVP of Digital Solutions Sam Shrauger. “Customers don’t want a wallet,” Shrauger said when Checkout launched in July. “They want to be able to pay and be done with the experience.”