Visa International EU Region and Paris-based credit insurance group Coface have announced a B2B e-commerce partnership.
The alliance marries Visa’s payment instrument services with Coface’s @rating solution, an online system to manage credit risk for trade counterparts.
The @rating quality label marks companies that are reliable in commerce, electronic or traditional. It assesses the capacity of contracting parties to honour commercial commitments and protects against the risk of non-payment during transactions. Companies can request the @rating label on a free multilingual Web site cofacerating.com – this references 35 million companies that are active in e-commerce worldwide.
Max Chatterjee, senior manager, Virtual Visa, says: “Although B2B e-commerce growth has been significant in recent years, potential has been limited by security concerns. We believe that this alliance will have far reaching effects for the market, benefiting all businesses engaged in e-trade, buyers and sellers alike.”
Visa and Coface intend to integrate the @rating service into offerings made to Visa’s member banks. These will include:
* the credit checking of the @rating of any company, first in Europe and then world wide;
* the possibility for any company through the bank to obtain its own label; and
* the possibility for a company to obtain the protection of credit risk on trade with another company, the amount of cover being linked to the @rating and the label.
Visa and Coface are also looking to integrate @rating within Visa Commercial card solutions (such as Visa Purchasing) for high value transactions.