Visa has announced expanded transaction processing capabilities in two state-of-the-art data centres in Singapore and the UK. The new global processing hubs will increase the speed, resilience and geo-diversity of Visa’s infrastructure, while strengthening the company’s ability to deliver new and more sophisticated ways to pay in today’s hyper-connected global economy.
The Singapore and UK data centres will complement Visa’s existing processing facilities in North America. With four synchronised data centres, Visa’s expanded footprint will boost the redundancy and resilience of its infrastructure, minimising the likelihood of service disruptions to Visa’s 16,600 financial institutions, millions of merchant acceptance locations, and 3 billion cards. The two centres are equipped with best-in-class technology, including high-performance hardware and energy-efficient power and cooling infrastructure. Visa plans to start processing global transactions in the two facilities in 2018.
Singapore Data Centre
Visa’s 10,000 square foot data centre in Singapore is Visa’s first transaction processing centre in Southeast Asia and will serve clients, cardholders and merchants across the region and in Visa’s global network.
“As home to our Asia Pacific headquarters, Singapore is already a major hub for the Visa business,” said Chris Clark, group executive, Asia Pacific, Visa. “With our new processing facility in Singapore, we’re strengthening our ability to meet rising demand for digital payments, while driving the pace of payment innovation across the Asia Pacific region.”
The new data centre is Visa’s third major investment in Singapore in the last two years. In September 2016, Visa launched the first international campus of Visa University at its headquarters in Singapore. In April 2016, Visa launched the Singapore Innovation Centre, a destination for clients, partners and developers across the region to work alongside Visa experts and jointly create next-generation commerce applications.
UK Data Centre
In June 2016, Visa Inc. announced the completion of its acquisition of Visa Europe, starting a multi-year process to combine the two companies into a unified global organisation with a shared technology platform. This integration brings 3,200 European clients onto VisaNet, Visa’s global transaction processing network, and involves a retrofit of Visa’s legacy data centre in the UK.
Once fully retrofitted, the 10,000 square foot facility will bring increased operational resilience for clients in the region while accelerating the speed-to-market for new payment innovations in the European market.
“The launch of our state-of-the-art data centre in Europe is a critical milestone, enabling all our clients and partners to take advantage of Visa’s global technical resources and assets,” said Bill Sheedy, CEO Europe, Visa Inc.
