Most people know Visa as the logo on a credit card. It is much more than one of the largest credit card networks in the world.

Visa Direct is a global payments network and is the world’s fastest, largest, and safest way to move money between people, businesses, governments, and organizations. In 2022 alone, Visa Direct facilitated 5.2 Billion transactions between more than 7 Billion credit cards, bank accounts, and digital wallets located in more than 190 different countries.

That type of scale is so staggering that Visa Direct needed to dimensionalize the story for its vast array of B2B customers – from corporate banks and fintech to small businesses and remittance providers – and give them a reason to partner with Visa Direct.

The objective was to leverage human stories to showcase Visa Direct’s global reach across myriad of use cases and do so in a digestible manner.

Each year, hundreds of trillions of dollars, euros, yen, rupees, yuan, and other currencies are exchanged between people, business, and governments.

Money Travels,” a 12-episode podcast series that tells the human side of moving money around the world. Each episode features the stories of real people impacted by these payments and includes industry experts who illustrate how advances in money movement can make people's lives easier.

Framed as a travel guide, the podcast details how people move money around the world. Each episode illustrates how regional payment trends and local payment nuances are impacting the global money movement landscape.

“Money Travels” is hosted by Dr. Indre Viskontas, well-renowned podcast host of the series “Inquiring Minds.” As an award-winning neuroscientist, Indre takes an outside-in human-centric approach to explore topics like sending global remittances, paying gig workers, connecting digital wallets, fighting money fraud, and more.

The last three years have seen a radical shift in people’s expectations of paying and getting paid. COVID led people to adopt digital payments for day-to-day transactions. Things like tap-to-pay are now routine for billions of consumers. But businesses have not kept up – it still takes days or weeks for them to move money around the world.

That tension formed our strategy – why do business payments lag behind consumer payments?

Since Visa Direct’s prospects are vast and nuanced – over 30 different target audiences – the approach was to highlight these gaps and tell stories of people most affected them. Why can’t people send money instantly to their home country? Why can’t an Uber driver cash out after her shift? Why can’t a small business pay his suppliers the same day?

It turns out that they can with Visa Direct. And listeners find out how on “Money Travels.”

Most podcasts are promoted to people based on broad parameters: age, gender, geography, and genre. This approach is too wasteful for the specific audiences that Visa Direct cares about. It was essential to reach and engage the right people at the right companies in the right countries.

As such, we implemented a custom-built ad serving platform that allowed for precise and trackable podcast promotions and greater ROI.

While messaging precision was paramount, “Money Travels” is available on dozens of podcast platforms all around the world. This global scale boosts the Visa brand not only with prospects but with anyone interested in the stories of global money movement.

While it only launched at the end of January 2023, “Money Travels” has risen to the top of global business podcast charts. It has significant reach in all of Visa’s primary regions including Africa and the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

It was #1 on business podcast charts in Cambodia, Egypt, Botswana, Costa Rica, Latvia, and UAE.

In key markets it hit the top 20 business podcasts:

- #4 India

- #4 The Philippines

- #8 Spain

- #10 Brazil

- #14 the United States

- #14 the United Kingdom

- #14 Canada

While still early, Visa has already heard leads mentioning the podcast on sales calls.

Overall, the success of the podcast across the world shows that it’s a topic of great interest. Moreover, we achieved our objective: now customers and prospects link Visa’s brand and Visa Direct’s network to compelling stories of global money movement.