Every large enterprise has them: IT systems that quietly do their job every day, with little fanfare and even less attention. They are stable, dependable and crucially, rarely touched. Over time, these systems fade into the background of daily operations, and knowledge of how they work can be lost.
In financial services especially, these “background systems” are often legacy solutions but integral to the functioning of vital processes.
Mandate to phaseout the Visa Edit Package.
The impending mandate from Visa to replace the long-standing Visa Edit Package with the Visa Clearing Exchange (VCX) tool by August 01, 2026 is a textbook example of how this can create risk.
For many institutions, the Visa Edit Package has been exactly the kind of system described above:
It performs vital processing and reporting of clearing data.
It is rarely touched, because there has historically been little change to how it works.
Consequently, the de facto owner may not know what it does or how it works.
As a result, organizations can underestimate the effort and risk associated with replacing it; not because the changes are inherently problematic, but because it is poorly understood and implementation errors can have significant financial impact.
What is the Visa Edit Package?
The Visa Edit Package is run by Issuers and Acquirers and is a critical component in clearing and settlement processing. Incoming and outgoing clearing files are run through it and validated. Crucially, the Edit Package also creates the settlement and reconciliation reporting used by many FIs to ensure that the data received from, and sent to, Visa aligns with what is expected, and with the amounts that Visa is expecting the FI to settle.
The reports generated by the Visa Edit Package are a critical control point, triggering the identification, investigation, and mitigation of technical or financial issues in clearing file processing.
Visa Clearing Exchange (VCX) is designed as a modern replacement for the Edit Package. While it aims to replicate core functionality, differences in configuration and reporting mean the transition is not a simple like-for-like swap.
Clearing and settlement: often overlooked and poorly understood.
The technical underpinnings of the Visa clearing and settlement processes are a critical backbone of card payments, yet they are understood in depth by surprisingly few people within FIs. Much of this complexity is hidden in legacy formats with complex specifications and rarely touched system components.
Why this change is risky?
Errors in the implementation and configuration of VCX can result in:
Incorrectly configured reporting, leading to issues in reconciling settlement amounts.
Rejecting good incoming transactions, which can lead to posting delays.
Rejecting outgoing issuer chargebacks which can lead to losses from failure torecover funds.
Incorrectly processed clearing files resulting in issues with downstream transactions processing, such as posting and chargeback lifecycle, requiring remediation.
External drivers expose background systems.
External drivers like the transition to VCX have a way of shining a harsh light on “background” systems. What initially looks like a straightforward change, can raise uncomfortable questions:
Who truly understands the impact of the systems involved?
What manual workarounds exist that were never formally documented?
Which downstream reports, or business processes depend on this system?
How confident are we in our ability to robustly test changes?
How Consult Hyperion can help.
At Consult Hyperion, consulting by Fime, we are experts in the systems that underpin financial services. This includes the Edit Package, clearing and settlement, authorizations, EMV, tokenization, open banking and cryptography. We help clients understand and navigate changes across both legacy and emerging technologies, and can support activities such as impact assessments, VCX readiness reviews, and implementation assurance. Contact our team to explore how we can help.
Ian Prince, Principal Consultant
Ian has over 25 years of experience in creating payment solutions, much of this in credit card issuance. Since 2015, Ian has worked on a variety of payments initiatives including writing EMV payment specifications, working on mobile payments solutions, evaluating regulatory compliance, evaluating the use of Biometrics and analysing payment options for a transit system. Ian was previously at Capital One, where he supported the bank’s migration of their payment card portfolios in the UK, Canada and the USA from magnetic stripe to EMV smartcards.
As the Technical Architect for all three migrations, he has a detailed understanding of the core processes within a payment card issuer, the capabilities of the platforms that support them, and the effort required to implement changes.
