Visa Enhances VisaNet

"Despite the fact that these are massive undertakings, in terms of complexity and time to prepare, we pride ourselves on implementing them smoothly without a single minute of downtime that could affect our Members and cardholders."

For this round of updates, Visa has invested more than $31 million related to 32 discrete projects, involving nearly 280,000 hours of work by programmers, testers, analysts, designers, and managers who spent the last 12 months preparing for the release.

Among the most significant changes, the revised VisaNet system will:

• Support the ability to use the full 16-digit card number for identifying whether a particular Visa Traditional or Visa Traditional Rewards consumer credit cardholder's transaction would benefit from a program or service offered by the merchant or Issuing financial institution. This provides tremendous possibilities for Issuers to personalize rewards and other programs to the needs of individual cardholders rather than larger groups.
• Enable real-time substantiation of qualified, over-the-counter medical expense purchases made with a Visa employee benefit debit card at supermarkets, discount stores, and other merchants. By validating qualified medical purchases at the point-of-sale, the auto-substantiation capability eliminates the need for plan administrators to seek receipts from covered consumers after an expense is paid, saving time and paperwork for both plan administrators and cardholders.
• Provide a global implementation of Visa Resolve Online (VROL), which streamlines the process of handling disputed transactions. By providing better access to transaction data online in a Member's back office, VROL can help settle disputes much faster, usually within a single billing cycle.