Visa has announced new details about a forthcoming business-to-business payments service developed in partnership with blockchain startup Chain.

Dubbed Visa B2B Connect, the near real-time settlement platform is aimed at providing a more secure, transparent mechanism for businesses making payments via Visa’s netowrk.

That the two firms would co-develop a platform for payments is perhaps unsurprising given their existing relationship and the fact that Visa was took part in Chain’s $30m funding round, announced last September. The credit card giant has made other blockchain tests related to payments public in the past year.

Jim McCarthy, Visa’s executive vice president for innovation and strategic partnerships, said in a statement:

“The time has never been better for the global business community to take advantage of new payment technologies and improve some of the most fundamental processes needed to run their businesses. We are developing our new solution to give our financial institution partners an efficient, transparent way for payments to be made across the world.”

Visa didn’t provide an exact launch date for the new service, describing today’s move as a “preview”. However, the company said that it will look to begin piloting the service in 2017.

Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Chain.

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