BLOG: VISA Pay Person To Person

By Jim Donovan: Don't have cash on hand to pay your friend $10 that you owe him? Do your children in college often call to say they need cash fast too? Well soon you'll be able to send payments directly to their Visa card.

Visa says it is creating a service to allow individuals to use their own Visa or a bank account to send money to a personal Visa debit, credit or prepaid card. Users also may bring cash to a participating bank to make a transfer.

Users also will be able to send money using a recipient's mobile phone number or e-mail address. In those cases, recipients will receive a message that someone is sending them money and then enter their own Visa account number to receive it.

Money transferred to debit and prepaid cards will be treated as deposits. Money sent to Visa credit cards will be treated as a payment.

This person to person service will start later this year. By the way, just in case you were wondering, there are about 1.85 billion Visa cards in circulation worldwide.