Quick Start Guide for Business Users

The Visa Developer Portal (Visa Developer) makes an increasing portion of our capabilities available as application program interfaces (APIs). From funds transfer to transaction controls to travel solutions, Visa Developer provides direct access to a growing number of APIs, tools, and support that can help you start building easier, faster, and more secure ways to power commerce. These APIs can help you transform your business and exceed customer expectations.

We have a large selection of APIs that can enable solutions for numerous business opportunities. Our API Catalog presents a full API listing organized by product and can be easily filtered based on product categories (if you have a general idea about your solution) or client segment (issuers, acquirers, merchants, etc.). Each product in the catalog links to an overview and a more in-depth technical documentation, including eligibility criteria. A few products are restricted and access to their documentation and assets are limited. If you're interested in getting access to a restricted product, please email us at [email protected] with a brief description of your use case. If you’ve explored this catalog in the past, a quick review of our Release Notes will help you keep up with the latest product and portal enhancements. 

As you browse our catalog, you might wish to validate that you’ve identified the right APIs for your needs and learn what additional value those particular APIs can provide. A single Visa Developer Platform API often enables vastly different solutions for our clients. For instance, while Dynamic CVV2 codes can provide additional security during guest checkout at a novel merchant, those codes can also be leveraged to request tokens for provisioning cards to a mobile wallet. At first glance, such secondary capabilities are not always visible, and we routinely add additional capabilities to existing products as we learn and innovate. Thus, to inspire you beyond the immediate opportunities you’re exploring, we have highlighted some of our popular Use Cases in the market today.

The Partner Gallery highlights how some of our partners worldwide are using Visa Developer Platform APIs to build experiences for their end-users. We invite you to explore and learn from their approach: some needed just one Visa API for their solution while others required a mash-up. No matter the route taken, we are proud to have helped enable all of these experiences and are excited to share their paths to success with you.

“The Visa Developer Platform was very simple to use, it was rich with documentation on how to go about the integration process and it was very well organized in general. It greatly enhanced our efficiency.” – Thomas Matthew, Software Architect, Interswitch

“Pulse iD has been rapidly scaling across APAC, our partnership with Visa has helped us navigate a very complex landscape.” – Alex Topaloski, CEO, Pulse iD

Check out the Visa Developer Partner Gallery today and get inspired to build with Visa APIs.

While the VisaNet infrastructure enables payments’ capabilities around the world, the regulatory regime across regions, nations, and even localities is often starkly different. These variations enormously influence if, how, and when value added services such as Visa Developer Platform APIs can be made available in a particular country or region. Consumer behaviors vary widely across the world as well. Many examples abound, but an obvious one is the proliferation of cash versus card versus mobile as the preferred method of payment. Hence, while most of our APIs are designed with a global audience in mind, a technologically feasible solution might not always be legally permissible or commercially viable. We encourage you to explore our Regional Availability  matrix to assess if a particular API is available for your target market[1]. This information is updated periodically to reflect the introduction of new products or availability changes for existing products.

We have a large selection of APIs that can enable solutions for numerous business opportunities. Our API Catalog presents a full API listing organized by product and can be easily filtered based on product categories (if you have a general idea about your solution) or client segment (issuers, acquirers, merchants, etc.). Each product in the catalog links to an overview and a more in-depth technical documentation, including eligibility criteria. A few products are restricted and access to their documentation and assets are limited. If you're interested in getting access to a restricted product, please email us at [email protected] with a brief description of your use case. If you’ve explored this catalog in the past, a quick review of our Release Notes will help you keep up with the latest product and portal enhancements. 

VDP is an open platform - Visa charges no fees for your opportunity to develop your application using any APIs in our Sandbox. After identifying the relevant APIs for your project’s needs and creating an account, you can test connectivity and sample code within the Sandbox. When you are ready to transition to Production, applicable fees apply. Pricing for Visa Developer Platform capabilities aims to charge our clients at the point where the capability provides value, for example, during a transaction, per API call, for a subscription, etc. Given the sheer variety of capabilities on our platform servicing multiple clients (issuers, processors, merchants, acquirers, FinTechs, independent developers, etc.), the pricing model is a function of many elements, including and most importantly your use case. While every project will be unique, we’ve created a basic Pricing Framework to help you better understand which capabilities are free, carry a one-time cost, or are priced per usage.

Your go-live journey starts by either engaging with your Visa representative or requesting the promotion of your Sandbox project through our Visa Developer Portal. The first phase of the going-live process, which we refer to as “Commercialization”, entails executing a VDP API Agreement that governs the pricing and licensing of Visa Developer Platform (VDP) APIs. We have simplified our contract structure to include only the standardized platform, API, and pricing terms across all eligible VDP capabilities. The Commercialization Framework on our site further elaborates on each of these areas while also highlighting other regional and future growth considerations. Once you signal your intention to go live, a Solutions Architect or Account Executive will guide you one-on-one throughout this process.

After the VDP API Agreement is fully executed, most clients are just a few weeks away from moving to Production. The most crucial determinant of this timeline is the readiness of your implementation in our Sandbox. Depending on the APIs’ complexity, we might require you to move your project into our certification environment for additional validation before promoting it to Production. We will also conduct certain checks and verifications related to Visa compliance requirements (PCI DSS, etc.) that we might require for certain capabilities. Refer to Visa Developer Onboarding for more details on the onboarding workflow to help ensure that the end product meets our expectations before we provide access to our network.

We have also compiled a Quick Start Guide for Developers to walk your product/engineering teams through the technical steps in greater detail. Once the internal review processes have successfully concluded, we will grant you the certificates for deploying your solution into Production. Of course, going live does not mean the end of our engagement, and we’re here to support you should issues arise in Production.

Visa partners with organizations that provide technology solutions that may help grow your business. Qualified partners can help implement APIs and advance your digital payment strategies.

The Visa Ready certification program helps technology companies build and launch payment solutions that meet Visa’s global standards around security and functionality. Visa Ready enables partners to accelerate their growth by providing certification guidelines and access to Visa product and go-to-market tools. 

Learn more about our Visa Partner Programs to help you make the right decision on which partner is right for you.