PhonePe and Visa roll out cardless payment tools for consumers and merchants
The partners have introduced Tap to Pay, Cross Border Scan to Pay and Smart Accept, enabling smartphone-based card acceptance and QR payments across 14 international markets. Tap to Pay will roll out in phases from September 9, 2026.
What happened
PhonePe and Visa launched Tap to Pay, Cross Border Scan to Pay and Smart Accept, expanding cardless payment acceptance for Indian consumers and merchants. Smart
Key facts
- 71.5 crore registered users
- over 5 crore merchants
- 14 international markets
- September 9, 2026
- February 2025
- July 2026
Why this matters
The partnership highlights strategic value in combining local payment rails with global card networks, creating potential acquisition, partnership and distribution opportunities around merchant software, acceptance hardware replacement and cross-border payments.
What to watch
- Number of Indian and international merchant locations enabled for Tap to Pay and Scan to Pay after launch.
- Supported countries, wallet/payment-rail interoperability and foreign-exchange pricing for cross-border QR transactions.
- Merchant discount rates, settlement timing and whether card acceptance is economically attractive versus UPI-only flows.
- Issuer participation, device compatibility and transaction-success rates for Visa Tap to Pay.
- Evidence of increased PhonePe merchant retention, card payment mix and merchant lending or software attach rates.
- Regulatory guidance on cross-border payment data, KYC, FX compliance and QR interoperability.
- PhonePe is likely to package Tap to Pay, UPI QR, card acceptance and Smart Accept into a single merchant onboarding and settlement proposition.
- Visa is likely to prioritize issuer enablement, Android-device certification and merchant-acquirer partnerships ahead of the September 2026 phased launch.
- PhonePe may introduce merchant incentives such as reduced setup costs, faster settlements, transaction analytics and working-capital offers to accelerate migration from QR-only acceptance.
- Competitors including Google Pay, Paytm, BharatPe, Pine Labs and bank acquirers may accelerate softPOS and multi-rail acceptance partnerships.
- The partnership could expand into tokenized credentials, recurring payments, loyalty-linked offers and cross-border checkout products once transaction volume is established.