Crown Agents Bank (CAB) and Visa today announced a collaboration to enable fast, efficient and reliable payments and foreign exchange transactions, particularly in the “last mile” – a term for the final and most complex stage in the payment process.

CAB is a UK-regulated bank that specialises in foreign exchange and cross-border payments for hard-to-reach markets. Visa has used CAB in the past to provide foreign exchange liquidity when processing high-value payments – such as bank-to-bank transfers or payments between large institutions – in certain jurisdictions.

As part of the newly announced collaboration, CAB’s network, which covers over 100 currencies in over 700 currency pairs, will be connected via API to Visa Direct, a payments feature that allows individuals and businesses to send money to eligible cards, accounts and wallets around the world. This will enable CAB customers to cost-effectively make payments of significantly smaller amounts across emerging markets and have those payments transferred directly to an eligible card, account or wallet of their choice.

For example, NGOs could more easily disburse funds and aid directly to recipients, remittance companies could more efficiently transfer money across hard-to-reach markets for their clients, and companies could reduce the cost of making small-value payments to creatives and freelancers. In emerging markets, it has always been difficult to make these types of low-value payments due to the additional costs in countries deemed higher risk by regulators.

The integration enables streamlined processing of large volumes of small transactions across the Visa Direct network. Visa Direct reaches more than 8.5 billion endpoints, including accounts, digital wallets and eligible cards in over 190 countries and territories.

Neeraj Kapur, Chief Executive Officer of CAB, said: “This collaboration is of tremendous importance to our customers. Our combined skills and expertise will enable us to reduce the costs and hassle associated with moving money across hard-to-reach markets: we can deliver more money more efficiently to those who need it most.”

Rajiv Garodia, Head of Visa Government Solutions, said: “Visa’s mission is to be the best way to pay and get paid – and that applies to everyone. That applies to your everyday credit card payments as well as to remittances to family members abroad or to an NGO sending humanitarian aid to those in need. This collaboration with Crown Agents Bank is an important step for us in fulfilling that mission.”