Alexandra Loi
Global CHRO at Revolut
The growth platform
for Fintech companies.
The Visa Innovation Program is a fintech pilot-centered collaboration platform designed to help your company scale and engage with Visa, its clients and partners.
Visa Innovation Program Europe is in search of the fintech companies that have the highest potential to partner and conduct pilot or proof of concepts with Visa clients and partners, therefore your capabilities should be go-to-market ready for the country you are applying to. We can support market expansion needs on a per case basis and other opportunities beyond.
Additionally, you will benefit from curated training, mentorship and introductions to selected investors.
Core Value Proposition
PoC/Partnership opportunities
Introduction to Visa and Visa’s clients to fast-track, test, validate and implement your solutions within Visa’s vast network of financial institutions and corporate partners.
Market Access
Access to new client base and business opportunities across Southern Europe (Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Turkey)
Powerful Community
Mentorships, masterclasses, workshops and peer to peer gatherings for practical knowledge exchange with a diverse entrepreneurial network of global fintech industry experts and investors.
Funding
Connect with some of the leading VC funds in Europe backing fintech startups.
Showcasing
Large exposure and access to top fintech and payment conferences as part of the Program.
Tech Stack
Startup perks, essential tools, industry data, tech infrastructure.
Personal Concierge
Dedicated support by a prominent design thinking expert throughout the program to guide you and help with all of your business needs and PoC efforts.
Mentorship
Top level industry mentors with diverse expertise and fintech experts from Visa to help you in the most essential aspects of your business.
Who Should Apply
If your team has already completed a proof of concept related to the proposed challenges or has a market-ready solution, you are the right fit for the Visa Innovation Program.
Stage
Startups and scale ups having a market-tested solution
Team
An experienced team with entrepreneurial spirit
Solution
A solution addressing one of our Challenges
Commitment
Dedication for pilot collaboration with banks and enterprises
The Program in Numbers
900
+
Applications
70
+
Selected Fintech Companies
70
Successful Proof-of-Concepts
1300
Mentorship Hours
80
+
Investor introductions
$
350
m+
Funding Raised*
*Funding raised by the participating Fintech companies after joining the program either independently or through connections of Program Managers (Eleven, Crowdpolicy, and Hackquarters).
Program Partners
The Visa Innovation Program is run by the collective efforts of our local partners in Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Turkey, Spain, Portugal and Italy. They bring their know-how, network, domain expertise and operational resources to make the Program a reality.
Main program managers
Eleven is one of the leading early-stage VC’s in Southeast Europe, investing in startups since 2012. With 150 collective investments over 10 years, Eleven’s team has been instrumental in catalyzing the regional startup ecosystem.
Hackquarters is the leading startup accelerator and corporate innovation partner, based in London and Istanbul, combining superb global reach with deep local knowledge.
Local ecosystem partners
Finnovating is the first Matching platform that connects 70K Tech startups, corporations and investors globally. The platform has created the largest community where its members from 125 active countries can easily connect and collaborate with potential partners to lead innovation, as well as find clients and connect with the best service providers and solutions of the ecosystem.
Fintech Solutions is the innovation agency dedicated to build the future of financial services by connecting financial institutions to the fintech ecosystem. Being part of Portugal Fintech, Fintech Solutions has extensive understanding of the European fintech and incumbent ecosystem and how both sides can collaborate.
Endeavor is the leading global community of, by, and for High-Impact Entrepreneurs — those who dream bigger, scale faster, and pay it forward. Driven by our belief that High-Impact Entrepreneurs transform economies, Endeavor is on a mission to build thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems in emerging and underserved markets around the world.
Talent Garden is Europe’s leading digital skills academy that has combined work life and learning to empower people and organisations through transformative experiences. We teach digital skills at the forefront of innovation and enable powerful connections in the digital ecosystem to support the implementation of a growth mindset.
The Timeline
Open call for Applications
Program Start
• Workshops
• Design Thinking sprints
• Design Thinking sprints
Graduation Event
Selection
• Discovery sessions
• One-on-One meetings with PoC partners
• One-on-One meetings with PoC partners
• PoC/Pilot development
• Mentoring sessions
• Mentoring sessions
Themes
We are looking for the best and brightest companies to address our themes. The applicants need to provide proven solutions to drive innovation and technological advancement for Visa and Visa’s clients.
If you believe your company addresses one or more of the challenges, you are welcome to apply and become part of the Visa Innovation family.
Advancing next-gen payments experiences
Can you unleash the potential of new technologies and infrastructures to introduce innovative payment journeys, increase operational efficiency with high-quality financial data or make real-time assessments? Are you enabling solutions around:
- Payments experiences in the metaverse
- Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
- DeFi applications
- Crypto risk, fraud and intelligence
- Open banking
- Digital wallets
Empowering Merchants and SMEs
Are you targeting to accelerate the growth of merchants and SMEs through digital payment solutions to foster financial inclusion? Are you focusing on:
- Next-generation omni-channel and face-to-face payments
- Installments, credit scoring, POS financing, BNPL
- Digital onboarding for financial services
- Seller onboarding and KYC solutions
- Merchant loyalty and engagement
- Working capital optimisation
Special project with UBB: Introduce QR codes, payment requests, “pay by link” or other solution that could be embedded in the UBB mobile banking directly, or as stand-alone app.
Unlocking new payment flows
Are you ready to digitize cash intensive P2P, B2C, B2B, B2b, G2C payments to create new commerce opportunities?
- Funds disbursements (e.g. Social commerce, the creator economy, refunds, government payments, cross-border payments/remittances)
- Finance management platforms for businesses (e.g. payments, accounts, procurement)
- Virtual payments credentials
- Supply chain payments, supplier onboarding and KYC
- Treasury/Payment-as-a-Service
- Payment infrastructure enablers
Building a smart and sustainable future
Can you help enhance payments technology to contribute to the transition to an eco-friendly economy and to drive inclusiveness, reduce inequality and create positive impact for people, economies and the environment? Are you working on:
- Urban mobility
- Government payments (e.g. Financial aid, social benefits, bill and tax payments)
- Interconnected services for citizens and tourists
- Financial education
- Carbon footprint / carbon neutral
- Sustainable finance / commerce / payment cards
- Impact management and measurement
- Impact Investing
Embedded Finance
Are you creating advanced intelligence to enhance payment and finance experiences in B2C and B2B commerce models?
- Instalments and flexible financing models
- Consumer loyalty and rewards
- Pre-and-post transaction engagement (e.g. sustainability tracking, transaction controls, PFM)
- Authentication solutions
- Banking/Fintech-as-a-Service
- B2B platform enablers
Testimonials
“The largest value of the program was access to the global network of partners, customers and a startup ecosystem. Iris Solutions pivoted from a B2C to B2B solutions company. We verified a fully new effective business model and strategy.”
Galya Dimitrova
CEO
Iris Solutions
“The program was pivotal in establishing key partnerships with Visa partners and Visa’s network and exploring new service lines for very small businesses. During the program duration we managed to expand our merchant outlets from 1100 to 1500 with promising collaborations in place and an extended contact network.”
Evangelos Rossetos
Co-founder
Simply POS
“The Program helped us to develop our product for small and medium enterprises with leading experts from San Francisco and London. A key step in our growth is the opening of our office in Berlin, located next to the Visa Innovation Center in Germany.”
Hristo Borisov
Co-founder and CEO
Payhawk
"We always want to work with market leaders like VISA and the banks that participate in the program. Connecting with experts is critical in accelerating our development and our market reach. Through the Visa Innovation Program we were able to get access to the banks and present our solution to key stakeholders across major financial institutions. VIP has helped us accelerate this process, and as a founder this is one of the most important and tough tasks."
Dimitris Kalavasis
CEO
RoadCube Inc
“This program gave us a unique opportunity to accelerate our product to market alongside some of the best mentors and leaders in the business. We also received the partnership with Raiffeisen Bank to build, test and create the future of payments with new biometric technologies that have never been done before on the Bulgarian market.”
Mihai Draghici
Founder & CEO
Paybyface
“Visa Innovation Program provided us with the support, motivation and partnerships from Visa’s wider network we needed to overcome the obstacles we faced and eventually launch our product for a PoC in the Greek market.”
Elena Avatangelou
Co-founder, Service & Product Design
Giving Streets
“The program was pivotal in establishing Glocalzone’s key partnerships with Visa and Visa’s network and entering new markets. What’s more, we grew our customer base from 10 to 150k users and our valuation increased 4 times during the period we were in the program.”
Doğan Turan
Co-founder
Glocalzone
‘’The tailor-made format of the Program and our personal design thinking concierge’s support allowed us to stay focused on our core business while working on a very practical case for Visa Direct’s integration in Fondy’s underlying technology. That’s invaluable when you run an international company and have to deal with multiple challenges as a founder."
Valeria Vahorovska
CEO
Fondy
“The Visa Innovation Program brought unparalleled value to our company. Throughout our collaboration with Eleven Ventures we managed to improve our value proposition, tailor the product towards different customer personas and experiment with business models. We were introduced to new clients, but most importantly, we managed to sign our first pilot project in less than two months.”
Catalin Rus
Co-founder and COO
Prime Dash
“The largest value of the program was access to the huge network of partners, customers and a startup ecosystem. We are able to keep up with the current trends, identify new opportunities and connect with startups and teams that are changing the financial world around us. Keep up the good work!”
Konstantinos Vaitsas
Head of Digital Innovation
Alpha Bank
Network
Mentors
Berkay Yavuz
Co-founder & CEO at Magnetiq
Elina Karpatcheva
European Compliance Center Chair
Evan Kotsovinos
GM/VP of Data at Google
Gilles De Clerck
Founder & Growth Strategist Ablaze Growth Studio
Marcel Dridje
Board Member European Business Angels Network
Peny Rizou
Head of Payments at Booking.com
Sevdalina Vassileva
General Manager (Israel, Greece, Cyprus, Malta), at Visa
Takis Georgakopoulos
Head of Global Payments at JPMorgan
Zornica Yanakieva
COO Cashcredit
Partner Banks
