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Small and mid-sized businesses using Intuit Inc.’s QuickBooks accounting software and payment-processing service will be able to get funds faster through Visa Inc.’s Visa Direct service, the companies announced Wednesday.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Intuit rolled out Instant Deposit for its SMB customers using QuickBooks Payments. Instant Deposit uses the Visa Direct push-payment service to deposit funds into a merchant’s bank account linked to a debit card. Actual funds availability depends on the receiving financial institution and region, but Visa said it requires fast-funds enabled issuers to make funds available to recipient cardholders within 30 minutes of approving the transaction.
The cost of using the service is 1% of the transaction on top of any other fees. Transfers are facilitated by Wilmington, Del.-based The Bancorp Bank.
Intuit said the service is meant to address a chronic problem small businesses face—cash flow. A report the company released earlier this year said 66% of surveyed small-business owners reported that the time it takes to process money after receiving payment has the largest impact on their company’s cash flow.
“We’re focused on providing faster funding and accelerating the rate at which payments hit a small business’ account,” Rania Succar, vice president and business leader of Intuit’s QuickBooks Capital and Payments unit, said in a news release. “With the help of Visa Direct’s push-payments technology, QuickBooks Payments is now able to deliver a business its money faster than ever.”
Bill Sheley, Visa senior vice president and global head of Visa Direct, added that “by partnering with another industry leader like Intuit QuickBooks, we are embedding Visa Direct’s convenient, secure and real-time capabilities to help make cash flow problems for small businesses a thing of the past.”
Intuit refused to reveal how many customers QuickBooks Payments has, but 4.5 million businesses subscribe to the online version of the accounting program, a spokesperson tells Digital Transactions News by email. “A significant portion of this subscriber base uses QuickBooks Payments,” adding that the payment service processes $55 billion in annual credit card and ACH payments volume. The spokesperson also says customers can use the Instant Deposit service with nearly any debit card, not just Visa debit cards.
The addition of Intuit is the latest of recent wins for Visa Direct. Other new clients include PayPal in Canada, Western Union, and digital-check technology provider Checkbook.
