Visa and Thunes will help millions of unbanked people through digital wallets

Thunes, a startup in cross-border payments, and Visa have teamed in a move that will bring 1.5 billion new endpoints to Visa Direct. More people and small businesses will be able to send money to places like Africa, Asia and Latin America, where digital wallets are typically the preferred method of payment. 

A business called Thunes, which has operations in San Francisco and Singapore, has collected $130 million in funding thus far and is backed by investors like Insight Partners, GGV, and Checkout.com. 

The companies that use its payments infrastructure include Uber Eats, Grab MoneyGram, Remitly and Western Union. Thunes currently manages more than 180 million transactions annually across 130 countries. 

The firm is interested in emerging markets because there are many unbanked people. The ability to fund digital wallets without a bank account or credit card makes them a popular alternative to traditional financial services. 

Through the cooperation, send-to-wallet services for customers, retailers, and SMEs will be integrated by about 14,900 financial institutions that are Visa clients through Visa Direct.

Now that Visa’s network is linked to Thune’s B2B platform, Visa Direct will reach the overall endpoint count of 7 billion. 78 digital wallet providers already integrated with Thunes will have access to the new send-to-wallet feature.