What comes to mind when you hear the name Visa? Odds are, the first thing you thought of was “credit card.” You might even have a Visa card in your wallet right now.
Photo credit: Visa
While Visa may be synonymous with payments, there’s a lot more to the organization than meets the eye.
Having over 60 years of experience in the payments sector yields several decades’ worth of expertise and data. Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA) is the team responsible for translating this wealth of information into actionable insights, combining the company’s payments know-how and data science capabilities.
“Team VCA consists of the heavy data users at Visa,” says Wang Peiwen, a senior data science manager based in the company’s Singapore office. “We use it to guide strategic decisions, fine-tune operations, and help our clients craft innovative payment solutions.”
Anatomy of the VCA
Thomas Duffy, senior data science manager at Visa’s office in Sydney, Australia, explains that the VCA team covers three broad areas.
“Firstly, we have a consulting team made up of folks that provide strategic recommendations to our clients based on their subject matter expertise of the payments ecosystem,” he says. “Then we have our data science team, which leverages core data assets – either from Visa or our clients – to derive insights pertaining to business problems and formulate actionable recommendations to solve them.”
Thomas Duffy, senior data science manager at Visa Australia / Photo credit: Visa
Duffy continues: “Lastly, our managed services team consists of consultants and data specialists who work in an embedded capacity within client organizations to solve and collaborate on large-scale projects.”
VCA offers a wide variety of insights, ranging from historical analyses to more predictive scenarios.
“On one hand, we’re like detectives, using historical data to uncover growth opportunities or gaps to improve payment processes,” Wang shares. “On the other hand, we’re also like forecasters: Based on predictive models, we try to anticipate future trends and see how we can support our partners.”
Visa harnesses a host of data analysis tools including its proprietary algorithms and statistical models to deliver real-time insights, enabling faster decision-making and improved business outcomes.
Peiwen Wang, senior data science manager at Visa Singapore / Photo credit: Visa
The company also provides services that allow customers to gain deeper insights into their payments activities, such as the Visa Analytics Platform, a dashboard offered to partners such as banks and card issuers. If you’ve ever wondered how organizations come up with the specific benefits and perks for all the different credit cards, the VCA team might have had a role in it.
For example, if a bank wants to launch a new credit card targeting Gen Z early in their careers, Visa can give insights on what kind of offers would appeal to them, such as cashback or entertainment deals. If a bank notices a decline in card usage among customers, Visa can analyze the bank’s data and devise strategies for greater engagement and retention.
More than just payments
While traditional financial organizations like banks may be the most obvious customers for VCA, it also works with companies that don’t fit the typical “card issuer” profile.
For Wang, her work with VCA has given her access to sectors such as retail, travel, and even oil and gas. For instance, VCA used Visa’s analytical models for its work with a leading oil and gas firm “to benchmark its performance against peers in the industry and understand market trends,” Wang shares.
“We wanted to understand customer loyalty and how engaged they were with that particular merchant,” she says. “Using technologies like machine learning algorithms to anticipate industry trends, we were able to help the company refine some of its payment strategies and loyalty programs to drive growth.”
Photo credit: Visa
Duffy has also been able to go beyond payments, citing Visa Australia’s work with a local government that was looking to address tourism challenges as an example.
“The government wanted to understand where tourist expenditure was coming from and how to uplift tourism in the region,” he explains. The team profiled consumer spending on Visa debit and credit cards in the region and “identified top-performing areas on a year-on-year basis,” Duffy says. After that, Visa Australia “made recommendations on how to enhance tourism opportunities, such as hosting events or funding specific industries.”
Visa has contributed significantly as well to growth in the broader financial sector.
“I’ve worked with the team to provide support for a fintech client who wanted to optimize and identify areas for improvement in their authentication process,” recalls Duffy. “By benchmarking their practices against industry competitors, we provided data-driven recommendations for optimization and the client has implemented most of them within the last year.”
Opportunities abound
For Wang and Duffy, working at Visa has allowed them to be more than data scientists.
“I’m in the middle of tech and business, with tasks involving both data analysis and project management,” points out Wang. “Aside from building the models and crunching the numbers, cross-functional collaboration between teams is also super important so that we can understand our client’s challenges and create solutions tailored to their needs.”
Photo credit: Visa
“Our role is to interpret insights from data outputs and liaise with other subject matter experts across the business, and how all that data is going to add value for our clients,” adds Duffy.
Duffy, who also heads the AI practice for Visa’s Australia and New Zealand operations, recognizes AI’s potential to propel VCA’s growth.
“Visa has been a pioneer of AI-centric solutions, and we are committed to develop new capabilities as the technological landscape continues to evolve,” he says. “We’re experimenting with natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and large language models, and identifying ways to use those techniques to add value to our partners, clients, and the payments ecosystem.”
Both Wang and Duffy are keen to see how VCA will continue to evolve, playing a crucial role in driving growth not just in payments but in the larger finance ecosystem as well.
“Using new technologies, we hope to support clients in their customer satisfaction efforts and guide financial services [as a whole] towards a more customer-centric future,” says Wang.
“We understand the challenges we need to solve for our clients, and know the capabilities and products we want to build,” Duffy concludes. “We’re building on this foundation and diversifying our offerings, and it’s exciting to be at the forefront of that.”
Visa Consulting and Analytics harnesses Visa’s large payments data set and turns it into actionable insights to help clients and partners optimize their business and product offerings.
Learn more about careers at Visa here.
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This content was produced by Tech in Asia Studios, which connects brands with Asia’s tech community. Learn more about partnering with Tech in Asia Studios.
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{URL}https://www.techinasia.com/payments-unpacking-visas-data-analytics-capabilities{/URL}
{Author}Stefanie Yeo{/Author}
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