Chinese cross-border payment company Payful launches cloud-native Visa charge card programme in Hong Kong with BPC

Payful, a Chinese cross-border payment company with a subsidiary in Hong Kong, has launched a cloud-native Visa charge-card programme for corporate and merchant clients on BPC’s SmartVista platform. For PSPs and high-risk operators, the point is simple: this is issuing infrastructure built to move settlement funds through card credentials, without forcing money into an external wallet first.

1. Payful says the programme gives corporate and merchant clients a more secure and efficient way to manage business spending through virtual Visa charge cards in the cloud. The setup is aimed at merchants that want more control and flexibility over payments, plus real-time visibility and a digital card experience with stronger protection.
2. The company chose a cloud model because it wanted modern issuing functionality that could be activated quickly while keeping operating costs low. Payful also said it was looking for a platform that could support product evolution for decades ahead, and that BPC was the only processor able to meet those requirements with a subscription pricing structure aligned to its growth strategy.
3. Using SmartVista, Payful says it can launch new card programmes at speed, including six Visa charge-card products focused on purchasing, travel and corporate credit, without custom coding. The fraud stack combines adaptive transactional scoring with 3DS 2.0 for every operation.
4. Payful integrated its core banking system via CBSGate APIs and added a notification service that pushes real-time updates to merchants and cardholders. The cloud setup links each Visa card directly to funds in merchants’ separate settlement accounts at Payful, so companies can settle supplier invoices or employee travel and expense claims instantly without moving money to an external wallet.
5. Ben Wang, General Manager of Card Business Unit, International Division, Payful, said the company built “a future-proven issuing business within a year” with BPC’s support and plans to replicate the model in key export markets across Oceania, Europe and the Americas. Nikhil Gujral, Head of Sales, APAC, BPC, said the cloud-native microservices architecture lets Payful scale the programme to new jurisdictions after the Hong Kong debut.

For high-risk PSPs, the important detail is not the corporate-card branding; it is the operating model. Payful is using Visa credentials as a layer on top of settlement funds held at the issuer, which is the kind of structure that can fit merchant spending, travel, and expense workflows without the usual friction of moving balances around first.