PayPal is about to get some competition from one of its own partners as Visa announced a new personal payments service on Wednesday. The offering would allow anyone from a participating bank to send payments directly to any Visa account, whether it be a credit, debit, or prepay card.

Visa said it needed to make some changes to its backend to allow its partners to accept incoming payments, as well as changes to the network itself. The creditor has partnered with CashEdge and Fiserv to handle the person-to-person transactions — Visa itself would not be directly involved.

To send a payment, the payer would need to know the payee’s 16-digit Visa account number, e-mail address, or phone number. Once sent, the payment would show up in the users account. This could be used in a number of ways — for example, making sure your child at college has money on his prepaid Visa, or that friend paying you back for that item you charged to your Visa credit card, etc.

Visa says the payment service should be available from participating financial institutions beginning in the second half of this year.

 
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