Visa Inc. has partnered with Fiserv and CashEdge to accelerate the use and delivery of person-to-person payments via mobile in the United States.

Consumers in the United States can receive and send funds to any eligible Visa credit, debit or prepaid account, anywhere in the world, via their mobile device. The service extends Visa’s recent mobile point of sale payments, to enabling consumers to pay one another.

“The combination of mobile and P2P enables people to transfer money anyone, anywhere while on the go – without having to write a check or be at your computer to use online banking,” said Neil Platt, senior vice president and general manager of U.S. banking at CashEdge Inc., Sunnyvale, CA.

Inquiries to Fiserv and Visa were not returned in time for press.

Through the agreements, CashEdge and Fiserv have access to VisaNet. This means the two companies can integrate the Visa personal payment service into their respective person-to-person platforms – Popmoney and ZashPay.

The participating banks’ customers can send money directly to a Visa account.

How it works
Bank customers of participating financial institutions will have the option to select a Visa account as the destination for funds when making a personal payment.

By entering the recipient’s 16-digit Visa account, email address or mobile phone number, consumers can send funds directly to the specified Visa account.

Visa personal payments are already offered by financial institutions outside the U.S. with more than 70 programs around the world enabling consumers to send funds to Visa accounts.

Availability of the service in the U.S. marks the first time a major payment network has introduced a global requirement for account issuers to accept incoming funds and thus enable a new generation of personal payment services.

The first U.S. financial institutions are expected to make Visa personal payments available to their customers through CashEdge and Fiserv by the second half of 2011.

“Through the agreement with Visa, Popmoney recipients will now have the option to direct funds to their eligible Visa branded credit, debit or prepaid account by providing the 16-digit Visa account number,” Mr. Platt said. “This capability expands the Popmoney offering by enabling Popmoney customers to send money domestically or internationally to recipients who may lack a traditional bank account, or to those who simply prefer to receive the funds directly to an eligible Visa prepaid, debit or credit account.”