Visa Announces $100-Million Venture Fund Focused on Europe and Israel

Visa Inc. announced on Monday a $100-million dollar venture investment fund focused on startups in European countries and in Israel. The credit card processing company also launched a fast-track program for partnerships with fintech ventures.

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“These are exciting times for payments in Europe,” Visa’s CEO for Europe, Charlotte Hogg, said in a statement as part of the company’s Money20/20 conference currently taking place in Amsterdam. Ms. Hogg said that regulatory and consumer behavior changes on the continent herald new opportunities for innovation.

Ms. Hogg addressed the service outage that affected Visa transactions across Europe last week, offering an apology and saying the incident is being investigated internally.

Shahar Friedman, Visa’s top executive in Israel, told Calcalist that Visa looks to Israel alongside Europe as it seeks out fintech innovation.

The company will look for technologies in areas like payments, information security, fraud prevention, and e-commerce.

Visa’s new startup program is designed for onboarding of new fintech startups to help them tap into the company’s network within four weeks. The initiative will start in the U.K. and then expand to Europe and Israel.

In February, Visa announced it was opening a technology scouting office in Tel Aviv, inlcuding a so-called collaboration lab for testing the use of services developed by startup within the company’s network.

The writer was a guest of Visa the Money20/20 conference.