Newline by Fifth Third Expands Global Reach with Visa Multinational Program

Newline by Fifth Third has integrated with Visa’s Multinational Program, allowing U.S.-based fintechs to issue corporate cards in over 40 countries. This move enables platforms to provide local currency transactions and bypass traditional cross-border friction, offering a scalable solution for expense management and SaaS providers looking to support clients with international workforces.

What was announced

Newline, the embedded finance division of Fifth Third Bank, revealed the collaboration at the Money20/20 conference. The integration allows eligible fintechs—specifically those in human capital management (HCM), expense management, and vertical SaaS—to issue Visa corporate cards for approved business use cases globally. The program addresses common pain points for U.S. businesses operating abroad, such as high currency conversion costs and inconsistent merchant acceptance.

By utilizing Visa’s Multinational Program (MNP), cards are issued for local use within the cardholder’s specific country. This ensures transactions are authorized in local currency and processed like those on a locally issued card, providing a more seamless payment experience for employees. Access to the program is subject to regulatory, financial crime, and sanctions requirements, but it allows fintechs to manage these international programs through their existing Newline relationship.

Newline provides the necessary BIN sponsorship and an API-driven platform to facilitate these embedded financial services. The technology is designed to help enterprise clients launch payment, card, and deposit products directly with the bank, backed by Fifth Third’s standards for risk management and scalability. The service is aimed at businesses managing teams and spend across multiple borders, where the friction of U.S.-issued cards often adds significant operational costs.

"This is what enterprise fintech can look like when you combine the history of innovation and scale of an institution like Fifth Third with the global reach of a network like Visa,"

Sushil Raja, general manager, Newline by Fifth Third

The companies involved

Newline by Fifth Third is a specialized division of Fifth Third Bank, National Association. It operates as an API-driven platform designed to help enterprise clients embed payment, card, and deposit products directly into their own software. Newline currently powers financial offerings for several industry leaders, including Trustly and Stripe. Its parent, Fifth Third Bank, is a major U.S. financial institution that has increasingly focused on modernizing its infrastructure to support the embedded finance sector.

Visa is a global leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions across more than 200 countries and territories. Its Multinational Program is a key component of its commercial strategy, designed to streamline cross-border money movement for businesses and financial institutions. The partnership leverages Fifth Third’s status as a regulated bank and Visa’s extensive network to bridge the gap between domestic fintech innovation and global financial requirements, allowing smaller platforms to offer the kind of international reach typically reserved for large global banks.

What FF News has reported before

Visa remains a central figure in the B2B and cross-border payment space, as seen in recent reports. FF News recently covered how Visa, BILL and Billtrust Launch First Live Pilot for Trusted AI Agent B2B Payments, highlighting the network's push into automated finance. Additionally, the network has been active in expanding card utility, such as when StraitsX Partners with Visa to Launch Stablecoin-Backed Cards in Over 100 Markets. Other notable activity includes a partnership where Visa and Mesh Partner to Enable Crypto Payments at 175 Million Merchants Globally.

What this means

This announcement signals a shift in the "Bank-as-a-Service" (BaaS) landscape, moving away from simple domestic card issuance toward complex, multi-jurisdictional compliance. By enabling fintechs to issue cards in 40 countries through a single U.S. relationship, Newline is putting pressure on traditional international banks that have historically dominated the corporate card market. The move highlights a growing demand for "local-loop" payments in the B2B sector, where avoiding FX markups is no longer a luxury but a requirement for SaaS platforms competing for enterprise contracts. It raises the bar for other BIN sponsors to provide similar global reach without increasing the compliance burden on the fintech client.