Crown Agents Bank (CAB) has partnered with Visa to facilitate ‘last mile’ payments in emerging markets.

CAB, a UK-regulated bank specialising in foreign exchange and cross-border payments for hard-to-reach markets, said the partnership would allow its customers to make payments across borders quickly and efficiently.

The collaboration will see CAB’s network, which covers over 100 currencies across more than 700 currency pairs, connect via API with Visa Direct, a payment capability which enables money to be sent to eligible cards, accounts and wallets around the world.

The integration will enable the handling of high volumes of small transactions across the Visa Direct network which has over 8.5 billion endpoints including accounts, digital wallets and eligible cards across more than 190 countries and territories.

CAB claims the partnership will enable its clients to move much lower value payments across emerging markets cost-effectively, and settle those payments directly into an eligible card, account or wallet of their choice.

The bank said the service has a variety of use cases such as allowing NGOs to distribute funds and aid directly to recipients and would reduce costs for paying freelancers.

Making low value payments in emerging markets has been challenging as CAB said there are additional costs incurred in jurisdictions regulators consider higher risk.

In the past, CAB said Visa has used CAB to provide FX liquidity in the settlement of high value payments, such as bank-to-bank transfers, or payments between large institutions in certain jurisdictions.

"This collaboration is hugely significant for our clients,” said Neeraj Kapur, chief executive at CAB. “Our combined capabilities and expertise mean we’re able to reduce the cost and friction associated with moving money across hard-to-reach markets: getting more funds delivered more efficiently to those who need it the most.”

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