Visa and ONDC explore tourism-discovery collaboration in India

Visa and ONDC are exploring a collaboration to make Indian tourism offerings easier to discover, potentially linking travellers with destinations, itineraries, local merchants and experiences through ONDC’s network.

— Source publishedFri, 11 Sept, 2026, 15:37 IST·First seen Fri, 11 Sept, 2026, 15:42 IST·Source ET Small Business

What happened

Visa and ONDC plan to explore a tourism discovery collaboration, combining Visa’s digital commerce capabilities with ONDC’s network to connect travellers with

Key facts

  • More than 500 million lifetime transactions

Why this matters

Visa’s interest validates ONDC as a potential distribution layer for travel commerce, raising partnership opportunities around payments, merchant enablement and destination-content integrations.

What to watch

  • Announcement of named pilot destinations, tourism boards, buyer apps or ONDC network participants.
  • Evidence that the scope includes bookable inventory and payments rather than only discovery, content or promotional offers.
  • Release of ONDC travel APIs or protocols covering inventory, ticketing, cancellations, refunds and traveler support.
  • Visa-funded merchant-acquisition programs, card-linked destination offers or cross-border traveller campaigns.
  • Participation by major OTAs, hotel chains, rail/bus operators, attraction-ticketing platforms or local-experience aggregators.
  • Metrics on active tourism merchants, search-to-book conversion, repeat usage, refund rates and service-resolution times.
  • Launch a destination-specific pilot covering attractions, local experiences, restaurants and merchant offers in one or more high-traffic tourism states.
  • Recruit travel inventory providers, destination-management companies, experience operators and local merchant aggregators onto ONDC-compatible seller applications.
  • Use Visa's acceptance, tokenization, cross-border payment and card-linked-offer capabilities to address international traveller payment friction.
  • Define standards for availability, cancellation, refunds, customer support, ratings and fulfillment accountability before enabling full booking transactions.
  • Position the network as a discovery-to-local-commerce layer alongside, rather than immediately against, incumbent OTA booking flows.