Visa Reinvents cards and Unveils 7 new products for the digital age

We live in a world where remembering 16-digit numbers is as outdated as the floppy disk. It's a brave new world where security and convenience are the dynamic duo, like peanut butter and jelly.

The payment landscape has evolved faster than a Pokémon, morphing from cash to checks to cards and now, digital wallets. Heck, we're just waiting for the day we can pay with our minds (although that might get a little messy, although Elon Musk is going full on , guns slinging with Neuralink).

So, get ready to wave goodbye to the bulging billfold and say hello to a future where your transactions are smoother than a silk scarf. Visa is the name to remember, the innovators who are making the payment world their oyster, one digital revolution at a time.

This edition of the Fintech Chronicler, dives into the 7 new product lines launched by Visa, what it means for us, the benefits (to visa mostly) and what should we be aware of.?

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Visa unveils New products for Digital Age

Visa's latest product announcements are nothing short of revolutionary, at least according to their press release. But let's be real, when has a company ever undersold their own innovations?

And what is this revolution according to them?

Imagine a world where a single physical card can be linked to multiple bank accounts - no more fumbling through your wallet trying to find the right one. And forget about remembering all those pesky passwords and PINs, biometrics are taking over. The real game-changer, though? Your trusty smartphone becoming your digital wallet.

Their first product unveil was the Visa's new "Flexible Credential", their attempt to reinvent the humble credit card. A one-stop-shop to choose on the fly whether you want to use your debit, credit, BNPL, or rewards program when you checkout. This product will allow a single card product to toggle between various other payment modes, essentailly controlling when and how they are used. Literally, One Card, to rule all your cards and payment methods. Wonder where they got that inspiration from.

Next we have "tap to everything". Now, this has had netizens confused. So, let me get this straight - we've all gotten used to the sweet, sweet convenience of tapping our cards for those smaller purchases, right? But now, the promise is that any NFC-enabled device can start accepting Visa tap payments? Talk about shaking up the status quo!

I can just imagine the confused masses scratching their heads, wondering, "Wait, so I can tap my phone to pay? My toaster? My pet rock?" The possibilities are endless, and the mind boggles at the thought of tapping our way through life.

But hey, if it means we can tap our way to a more seamless payment experience, I'm all for it. Just as long as I don't accidentally tap my way into paying for my neighbor's groceries. That could get real awkward, real fast.

The Visa Passkey is like a digital hall pass for the virtual world - no more juggling a million passwords, just a quick biometric scan and boom, you're in. It's like the future is finally catching up to our laziness.? Now if only we could get our fridges to unlock with a retina scan too, then we'd really be living in the future!

The fourth product was really just a bundle, of Passkey with Click to Pay, making checkout process faster than a cheetah on RedBull, and as secure as Fort Knox.

Then they had their acquisition of TINK paying off, bringing the convenience of card payments to real-time account-to-account transfers. Using TINK's open banking APIs, which are pretty popular in Europe, to the rest of the globe. It's like they took the best of the digital wallet and the best of the bank account, shook them up, and poured them out as a refreshing financial smoothie for the world to enjoy.

Wrapping up the security aspect of this was yet another product bundle, Visa Protect for Account to Account transfers. Now Visa protect has been around for a log while now, where they leverage the treasure trove of transactional data, thanks to their leadership position, to identify and stop frauds in real time.?

And then of course there was the old wine in a new bottle - Data Tokens. To help tokenise not just your card details, but potentially even your transactional information.

So, now that we have the headline out of the way. Let us dive into what each of these new product launches mean for us and what should we be on the look out for?

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