Visa launches payment passkeys in India, replacing OTP with biometric authentication for card transactions
Visa's passkey system lets shoppers authenticate card payments via biometrics instead of OTP, now live with IDFC First Bank and merchants including Myntra, Paytm, Reliance Digital, Tata Starbucks and EatSure. Aims to cut checkout friction as UPI hits 757 million daily transactions.
What happened
Visa launches payment passkeys in India, letting users authenticate card transactions via biometrics instead of OTP. Live with IDFC First Bank and select
Key facts
- 757 million daily UPI transactions in June
- one-fourth to one-fifth device cost
Why this matters
Visa's live merchant network (Myntra, Paytm, Reliance Digital, Tata Starbucks, EatSure) around biometric authentication creates partnership and acquisition hooks in the Indian checkout-orchestration and payment-authentication stack.
What to watch
- Published conversion/abandonment deltas from Myntra or Reliance Digital
- Second major bank or Mastercard/RuPay passkey announcement
- RBI guidance or statement on biometric authentication data compliance
- NPCI/UPI feature launch responding to card friction reduction
- Passkey share as % of eligible card transactions in quarterly disclosures
- Any reported fraud or account-takeover incident tied to passkeys
- Retailers audit checkout stacks to enable Visa passkey SDK and A/B test conversion vs OTP
- Competing networks (Mastercard, RuPay) announce passkey pilots with anchor banks
- Payment aggregators (Razorpay, Paytm, PhonePe) bundle passkey enablement as merchant differentiator
- Issuers market biometric checkout as premium card feature to lift card-not-present volume
- Merchants segment high-cart-value flows (travel, electronics) for priority passkey rollout