Visa Launches Payment Passkey in India, Pushing Checkout Beyond OTPs

Visa's Payment Passkey lets shoppers authenticate card payments via fingerprint, face or device PIN instead of OTPs. India is the world's most tokenised online card market, with nearly 500 million Visa tokens live, sharpening merchant checkout security amid the AI boom.

— Source publishedThu, 2 Jul, 2026, 18:59 IST·First seen Thu, 2 Jul, 2026, 19:34 IST·Source NDTV Profit

What happened

Visa launched its Payment Passkey solution in India, enabling card payment authentication via fingerprint, face or device PIN instead of OTPs. India is the

Key facts

  • 900 million payment tokens
  • almost 500 million Visa tokens
  • Rs 28.9 lakh crore UPI June

Why this matters

Visa's passkey push into India's tokenised market raises the bar on checkout security, pressuring payment and fraud-prevention players to partner, acquire, or match biometric authentication capabilities.

What to watch

  • RBI guidance on passkeys as valid AFA/2FA substitute
  • Published conversion-lift and fraud-reduction benchmarks from launch merchants
  • Device OS/browser passkey support penetration in India Android base
  • Competitor passkey launch announcements
  • Merchant integration count crossing threshold in first 2 quarters
  • Large e-commerce and quick-commerce players pilot passkey checkout to cut cart abandonment
  • Issuer banks bundle passkey enrollment into app onboarding flows
  • Mastercard/RuPay announce competing biometric authentication to hold parity
  • PSPs (Razorpay, PayU) expose passkey SDKs to mid-market merchants