Financial services giant Visa is opening data centres in Singapore and the UK in an effort to keep up with global demand as people increasingly move away from cash towards cards and mobile transactions.
In order to be able to deal with increasing demand for these types of payments, the company says the new data centres will ‘increase the speed, resilience and geo-diversity of Visa’s infrastructure.’
Executive vice president of technology at Visa, Rajat Taneja, said: “Commerce and payments are in the midst of an historic shift from analog to digital.
“With our technology investments in Asia and Europe, we’re scaling up our infrastructure to meet the explosive growth in digital and mobile payments, while maintaining the secure, convenient and always-on service that our clients and partners expect.”
Visa already has data centres in North America, and the additional infrastructure aims to boost its worldwide resilience.
The company notes that with ‘16,600 financial institutions, millions of merchant acceptance locations, and 3 billion cards’, it is critical to minimise the possibility of service disruption.
The new facilities are both kitted out with best-in-class technology, including high-performance hardware and energy-efficient power and cooling infrastructure, according to the company, although it did not give much away in terms of technical details.
Singapore continues to lead the way in data centre investment in Southeast Asia. The business oriented city-state plays host to Visa’s Innovation Centre, which helps businesses and experts collaborate to create next-generation commercial applications.
Assistant managing director of the Singapore Economic Development Board, Kelvin Wong, welcomed the decision. “This investment strengthens the sophistication of Visa’s business footprint in Singapore and is a testament to Singapore’s regional leadership in data management and connectivity.”
In the UK, Visa is retrofitting the 10,000 square-foot facility that was serving Visa Europe, which was acquired by Visa Inc in June 2016. The updated and modernised data centre marks an important point in the expansion of Visa’s digital services.
Visa Europe CEO, Bill Sheedy, commented: “The launch of our state-of-the-art data center in Europe is a critical milestone, enabling all our clients and partners to take advantage of Visa’s global technical resources and assets.”
