Visa has introduced Visa Intelligent Authorization, a new feature on the Visa Acceptance Platform. This capability is aimed at enabling acquirers, banks, and other financial institutions to modernize their authorisation infrastructure via a single API connection.

This product was unveiled during an event in Cairo, Egypt. The solution offers acquirers the ability to process transactions across major global and local card networks through one unified integration, eliminating the need for separate legacy systems dedicated to each network. According to Visa, the platform ensures 99.999% uptime with a global approval rate of 96.3%, based on card-present and card-not-present traffic data from March 2024 to February 2025 (excluding India).

Overcoming legacy infrastructure constraints

Much of the current authorisation platform infrastructure was designed for a different era of payments, and may struggle with modern requirements such as high uptime, real-time intelligence, and regulatory flexibility. These limitations can result in lower approval rates, higher operational costs, increased complexity in compliance management, and slower market expansion into new payment experiences and industries.

Visa Intelligent Authorization can be used as a primary authorisation processor or supplementarily alongside existing infrastructure to support business continuity and expanded functionality without necessitating a complete system overhaul. It also provides real-time insights and updates that aim to reduce transaction friction and facilitate quicker settlement processes.

The introduction of this solution is seen as a significant step towards modernizing the acquiring segment, addressing the historical challenges associated with managing multiple network authorisation connections in terms of cost and complexity.

Leila Serhan, Senior Vice President and Group Country Manager for North Africa, Levant and Pakistan at Visa, highlighted that the evolving nature of commerce necessitates an authorisation infrastructure capable of adapting to new requirements. She described Visa Intelligent Authorization as a means to enhance reliability now and prepare for future advancements.