In today’s dynamic financial landscape, delivering fast, reliable, and scalable financial services is paramount for issuers, acquirers, fintech companies, and other payment enablers. As digital transformation accelerates across industries, these institutions must continually innovate to remain competitive and meet their customers' evolving needs.
Visa, a global leader in digital payments, offers a robust range of solutions designed to enable financial institutions to serve their clients better, optimize operations, and drive business growth. One notable example is Visa’s collaboration with Froda, a leading fintech specializing in business loans for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Through this partnership, Visa’s technology is seamlessly integrated into Froda’s lending platform, creating a highly efficient solution for SMB financing. This case demonstrates how the collaboration with a fintech company can help banks expand their service offerings and tap into new market opportunities, such as those serving SMBs.
Addressing Market Gaps: The Need for Flexible Financing
SMBs can sometimes encounter challenges in accessing the financing they need. By leveraging Visa’s digital payment capabilities alongside Froda’s solution, financial institutions can deliver faster and more accessible financing options, empowering SMBs to seize growth opportunities and strengthen their business resilience.
The partnership with Froda showcases how Visa’s digital payment capabilities and infrastructure can empower banks to address these unmet needs and enhance their value proposition.
The Visa-Froda Solution: Streamlining Access to Finance and Driving Growth
Visa’s partnership with Froda offers a comprehensive solution that simplifies the lending process and enables real-time disbursements for SMBs. This solution includes:
- Digital-First Loan Application and Approval: Froda’s lending platform, powered by Visa’s technology, offers a fully digital, white-labeled solution that issuers and other financial institutions can integrate into their own offerings. This enables banks to provide a streamlined application process that reduces manual intervention, accelerates approval times, and minimizes operational costs.
- Real-Time Fund Disbursement and Financial Management: Once a loan is approved, Visa Direct facilitates real-time disbursements, ensuring that funds are made available in minutes rather than days. Businesses can then utilize Visa commercial cards to manage their expenses, allowing for automated repayments, better cash flow control, and real-time visibility into spending patterns.
Realizing Growth and Innovation: Key Outcomes of the Visa-Froda Partnership
The Visa-Froda partnership has demonstrated significant value creation for all stakeholders, including banks. By leveraging Visa’s global network and infrastructure, Froda’s technology is seamlessly integrated into the banking ecosystem, enabling banks to provide an innovative and accessible financing solution to SMB clients. This collaboration allows banks to offer Froda’s loan products through their own services, enhancing their offerings and creating new growth opportunities.
Some of the key benefits observed include:
- Market Expansion and Increased Reach: Froda’s scalable technology, supported by Visa’s digital solutions, enables banks to expand their reach across Europe. The solution is already being used in markets such as Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.
- Enhanced Service Efficiency: With Visa Direct and through banks, real-time disbursement capabilities have reduced processing times from up to 72 hours to just minutes, enabling Froda and its banking partners to provide a superior customer experience and expand opportunities for collaboration.
- Business Growth for Clients: SMBs utilizing the Visa-Froda platform through their banks grow 12 times faster per year than the average Swedish business, highlighting the impact of improved access to capital and financial management tools (Based on Froda’s internal data and Statistics Sweden (2023) figures on average Swedish business growth)
- Operational Optimization: Visa Direct enables immediate loan disbursements, while Merchant initiated transactions (MIT) allow Froda to automate scheduled withdrawals without manual intervention. This card-enabled embedded lending approach streamlines repayments, reducing administrative costs and operational complexity for banks and SMBs.
Enabling Strategic Growth for Issuers, Acquirers, and Fintechs
Visa’s comprehensive suite of products extends beyond traditional payment solutions, providing partners with advanced capabilities that enable them to innovate and lead in a competitive marketplace. Through real-time payment solutions, expense management tools, and scalable infrastructure, Visa equips financial institutions and fintech companies to deliver value-added services that optimize operations and enhance customer experiences.
- Enhanced Payment and Expense Management: Visa Direct offers real-time payment capabilities that streamline disbursements and minimize cash flow friction, while Visa commercial cards provide granular control over business expenses, helping organizations and their clients optimize cash flow and expense tracking.
- Scalable Solutions and Global Reach: Visa’s technology can be seamlessly integrated into existing offerings through white-label solutions, allowing institutions to extend their service portfolio without investing in additional infrastructure. Visa’s global network also enables partners to enter new markets and expand their reach with minimal operational overhead.
About Froda
Founded in 2015, Froda set out to redefine business financing by making it accessible, efficient, and empowering for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Through digital processes and technological innovation, Froda has shortened the loan process from months to minutes, making it easy for entrepreneurs to invest in their ideas and grow with ease. Today, Froda is one of Europe’s fastest-growing fintech scaleups. With a strategic focus on embedded financing,
Froda has expanded across the Nordics, the UK, Ireland, and Germany, partnering with industry leaders like Visa, Checkout.com, and Lunar. Froda is a licensed credit market company under the supervision of the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority.
For more information, visit Froda at www.froda.se
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 payment 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.
The Visa-Froda solution is offered exclusively by Froda. Froda is the contracting party responsible for the product and its associated services. Clients interested in the solution will contract directly with Froda. Visa provides supporting technology and infrastructure but does not directly offer this solution.