Visa licences Novatti to issue cards in New Zealand

By Edil Corneille

Novatti, a digital banking and payments company, announced that it has been licenced by Visa to issue cards in New Zealand. This marks an expansion of the company’s existing partnership with Visa, after being awarded a Principal Issuer Licence in Australia in September 2019, which enabled Novatti to issue physical and digital Visa Prepaid cards. This partnership has already seen Novatti launch multiple new, financial technology (FinTech) and financial products to market through an affordable, API driven, Visa card program.

In October last year, Novatti obtained the necessary approval from New Zealand’s regulators to launch its card issuing business in that market and has acted quickly to develop this new capability with Visa. This new service in New Zealand will be provided through Novatti’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Flexewallet (NZ) Limited.

Managing Director of Novatti, Peter Cook, said: “Novatti’s approach is to develop platforms that enable us to scale quickly and our Visa issuing business is a great example of this. Having established a strong partnership with Visa in Australia, we are very excited to now extend this partnership into New Zealand at a time when digital payments are rapidly rising while cash declines.

“As a first step, expanding Novatti’s Visa issuing business into New Zealand enables us to provide complementary services to our existing global customers with a presence in New Zealand, while also capitalising on the deep relationships that already exist there through Novatti’s subsidiary company, Emersion.”

The Melbourne-based digital banking and payments company, in December 2020, formed a major new partnership with global payments disrupter, Ripple, to target the rapidly growing South-East Asia region.