Visa and BPI partner to launch Visa Direct, enabling outbound international transfers for Filipino businesses

04/29/2026

• Launch of Visa Direct will expand seamless, secure outbound payment channels for Filipino businesses and consumers

 

From left to right – Joel De Vera, Head of Strategy, Products, and Support of BPI Institutional Banking; Louie Cruz, Head of Institutional Banking, BPI; Arturo Plannell, Group Country Manager, Visa Regional Southeast Asia; and Jeffrey Navarro, Country Manager for Visa Philippines

 

Visa (NYSE: V), a global leader in digital payments, has partnered with the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), one of the country’s leading financial institutions, to launch Visa Direct, a real-time, push-payment service that enables fast, transparent, and reliable  money movement. The partnership will enable BPI customers to make outbound cross‑border transfers to bank accounts, cards, and wallets worldwide, modernizing how retail customers and small businesses send money and payments overseas.  The initiative will build on BPI’s strong digital and mobile banking capabilities and supports the bank’s broader digital transformation objectives.

Filipinos rank among Asia Pacific’s top adopters of digital remittances, according to Visa’s Money Travels: 2025 Digital Remittances Adoption Report, which covers 44,000 remittance senders and receivers in 20 key countries and territories. Some 74% of Filipinos have opted to send money digitally, while 66% prefer to receive digital remittances. Over two-thirds, or 76% of Filipino survey respondents report sending remittances at least once a year, and 45% cite digital remittances as a safe and secure way to send and receive funds internationally.

“Filipino customers already know how simple and reliable real-time payments can be through InstaPay in a domestic setting. BPI's aspiration is to bring that same trusted experience to the global stage. Through our partnership with Visa, clients will soon be empowered to send money abroad directly through the BPI app, enabling real-time transactions that are faster, more transparent, and more secure. This partnership removes the traditional complexity of cross-border transfers, giving consumers greater confidence that their funds will reach loved ones overseas with the same ease and certainty they experience locally.” said Joel De Vera, Head of Strategy, Products, and Support of BPI Institutional Banking.

“Digital payments are transformative, and Visa Direct underscores our commitment to help Filipino retail and business customers, particularly micro to small and medium enterprises or MSMEs and SMEs, to connect to more opportunities globally through the power of secure and seamless money movement. We see this collaboration with BPI bridging gaps in cross-border transfers while helping expand financial inclusion, enabling more Filipinos to participate in the global digital economy,” said Jeffrey Navarro, Country Manager for Visa Philippines.

Visa Direct is a real-time push payment platform that facilitates the delivery of funds directly to eligible cards, bank accounts, and wallets worldwide. Launched over a decade ago, Visa Direct revolutionized fund disbursements and peer-to-peer (P2P) payments with its fast, secure, and convenient platform, reaching over 12 billion endpoints in more than 195 countries and territories as well as 150 currencies.

 

About Visa

Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.

 

About the Bank of the Philippine Islands

The 174-year-old Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) is the first bank in the Philippines and the oldest in Southeast Asia. BPI licensed as a universal bank by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to provide a diverse range of financial services: deposit taking and cash management, payments, lending and leasing, asset management, bancassurance, investment banking, securities brokerage, and foreign exchange and capital markets. BPI has significant financial strength, with robust Tier 1 capital adequacy ratios and profitability, underpinned by stringent compliance and risk management regimes.