The beginning of 2024 saw the unveiling of Zing, HSBC's latest international payments app, a product of a strategic alliance with Visa. Launched in the UK in January, Zing marries HSBC’s trusted financial acumen with Visa’s sophisticated payment infrastructure, allowing users to manage funds in over ten currencies, send payments in more than thirty currencies, and conduct transactions in more than 200 countries and territories through a single digital platform.
This collaborative effort was fueled by Visa's technology, which establishes a streamlined point of contact throughout the project, enabling the creation of a robust multi-currency wallet powered by Currencycloud—acquired by Visa in 2021. Additionally, the app features multiple account funding options, including a ‘quick bank transfer’ function enabled by Tink, another Visa acquisition.
To delve deeper into the nuances of this partnership, The Digital Banker engaged with Rohit Narang, Visa's Head of Integrated Money Movement for Asia Pacific, who highlighted the extensive benefits of their collaboration.
"As background, one of the businesses we have under cross-border solutions is Currencycloud, which was acquired in 2021. Currencycloud is a money movement specialist company with us that offers comprehensive, B2B cross-border solutions for businesses and international payments and it’s built on a fairly agile extractor on innovative APIs and cloud technology," said Narang.
The demand for instant and secure payment experiences has grown significantly. "The reality of the world today is that consumers want really fast and secure and simple payment experiences, regardless of which currency or which country they are paying in. At Visa and HSBC, these kind of capabilities would be seen as an opportunity to meet the specific demand and to mitigate many of the barriers that one comes across in international payments, which are high exchange fees, timing delays, and so on," Narang explained.
With that in mind, Visa has developed multiple functionalities tailored for Zing: a multicurrency wallet powered by Currencycloud, integration with open banking technology provided by Tink, a smart multicurrency Visa card for global transactions, and simplified global money transfers facilitated by instant collections and a user-friendly interface. "These are the four capabilities brought together to allow Zing’s customers to be able to hold and move money in a secure, transparent and cost-effective manner," Narang stated.
The timeline from ideation to rollout of these features was notably swift. According to Narang, "This partnership is quite a good example of FinTech and big tech innovation. What we did was we combined the innovation, which Zing was aiming to achieve, with extremely custom-made solutions from Currencycloud and Tink and Visa’s global reach. We worked together to create a bespoke solution for them in a fairly quick fashion and deliver value for them without sacrificing any speed to market."
Tailoring solutions to meet Zing’s specific needs was a critical aspect of the collaboration. "Based on the needs that Zing had, we created this customised card solution, which used a variety of the parts I mentioned earlier," Narang elaborated.
The resulting suite of services includes competitive currency exchange rates, advanced financial management tools, instant collections, and real-time exchange rates for B2B transactions. "All of that was delivered by a smart multicurrency Visa card. So it’s a pretty unique proposition if you combine all that together versus what you’ve seen in the market," said Narang.
As Zing continues to gain traction, the focus will remain on optimizing and expanding its features to ensure that it meets the diverse needs of users in an increasingly interconnected global economy. The benefits of this partnership could herald a new era of seamless digital transactions, setting a benchmark for future collaborations in the fintech space.