SAN FRANCISCO — Visa is looking to take on Silicon Valley payments companies like PayPal and is turning to developers to jumpstart its efforts.

The company launched a far-reaching developer platform Thursday that will allow developers and other companies to access the company's payments tools. The move marks the first time Visa has made its payments processing tech widely available to third parties.

Right now, Visa Developer consists of more than 150 application program interfaces (APIs) that enable everything from fraud prevention, mobile checkouts and person-to-person payments. These tools are open to any third-party company or developer who wants to experiment with using Visa's infrastructure into its services. (Though developers can test the tools out for free, Visa will charge developers who launch apps using its APIs.)

Previously, tools like Visa Checkout, which enables a universal checkout process so users don't have to manually enter payment information, was only available to a limited set of partners, like banks and other institutions.

Visa CEO Charlie Scharf said the initiative would help the credit card company bridge the gap between physical payments and digital payments. "Penetration of electronic payments is still small," Scharf said during a press event in San Francisco. "In India it's just 4%, in Brazil 30%, and even here in the U.S. just 50%. And the opportunities — beyond eliminating cash and check — building commerce in the digital space is staggeringly large."

Opening a developer platform also puts Visa, headquartered in Silicon Valley, in direct competition with tech companies like PayPal and other payments providers. Visa is already a partner with Stripe, the payments processing company that powers transactions on Twitter, Pinterest, Lyft and other services.

Even though Visa is entering into the space much later than its other Silicon Valley-based rivals, the company says it has an advantage over other companies because of its extensive network of partners, including thousands of banks and other financial institutions.

"From Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon to Facebook and Microsoft... the benefits of network effects mean that scale and standardized instant access to distribution wins," Visa's SVP of Global New Product Mark Jamison wrote in a blog post.

"No other company in this space has yet to deliver the customer density, global reach and scale that will be available through Visa’s open platform."

Updated at 5:30 p.m PT to reflect that Visa is an investor in Stripe.