PhonePe and Visa partner to bring borderless, cardless payments to Indian consumers and merchants

PhonePe and Visa on Wednesday unveiled a partnership to create one of India’s most comprehensive cardless payment experiences, spanning online purchases, in-store transactions and overseas travel. Announced at the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2026 in Mumbai, the collaboration introduces Tap to Pay, Cross Border Scan to Pay and Smart Accept, while positioning PhonePe as the first app in India to offer Visa’s cross-border QR payment capability.

More significantly, the partnership brings multiple Visa capabilities into the PhonePe ecosystem, allowing consumers to move between online, in-store, and international payments without a physical card. It also extends to micro-merchants, who can use their smartphones to accept card payments without investing in a separate Point-of-Sale (POS) machine.

The announcement builds on Visa Device Tokenisation, introduced on PhonePe in February 2025, and reflects a joint effort to simplify how consumers can use cards across payment environments. Instead of relying on a physical card, users who save a Visa card on PhonePe can access payment experiences through their smartphones, from online checkouts and contactless in-store purchases to QR-code payments while travelling overseas.


The partnership comes as India’s digital payments ecosystem evolves beyond peer-to-peer transfers and merchant QR transactions to a more integrated model focused on convenience, security, and interoperability across channels. The focus is shifting from enabling digital payments to making them work seamlessly across contexts, geographies, and devices.

Speaking at the launch, Rahul Chari, Founder and Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO) at PhonePe, said the partnership represented an important juncture in the company's effort to build more accessible payment experiences. “At PhonePe, our vision has always been to build technology that makes payments universally accessible, intuitive, and secure. Partnering with Visa is pivotal in scaling that vision globally. By unifying online tokenisation, Tap to Pay, and Cross-Border QR payments alongside Smart Accept for merchants, we are removing friction across the entire payments value chain. Through this partnership, we are not just digitising cards; we are establishing a new standard for borderless and cardless commerce for Indian consumers and micro-merchants alike,” Chari said.

Suresh Sethi, Group Country Manager, India and South Asia at Visa, said the partnership reflected a shared ambition to make digital commerce more accessible across borders. “India is at the forefront of the global digital payments revolution, and Visa is proud to be a catalyst within this transformation. Our partnership with PhonePe is another step forward in this direction and reflects a shared vision - to make trusted, secure and frictionless commerce accessible to every Indian, across borders. By bringing together our global network, tokenisation capabilities, and PhonePe’s unparalleled reach into a seamless experience, we are not just simplifying payments; we are reimagining how India connects with the global economy. This collaboration reaffirms Visa’s vision of being the best way to pay and be paid worldwide, delivering payment experiences that are as secure as they are effortless,” Sethi said.

Among the newly announced offerings is Tap to Pay, which allows Android users to tokenise their Visa cards and make contactless payments directly at POS terminals using their smartphones. Designed to work even in low-connectivity environments, the feature will roll out in phases starting 9 September 2026. By eliminating the need to carry a physical card for everyday purchases, the companies say the feature makes contactless payments more accessible and convenient.

A centrepiece of the partnership is Cross Border Scan to Pay, which extends QR-code payments beyond India’s borders. The feature will allow users to scan Visa-supported QR codes across 14 international markets, including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Japan, China, and South Korea. For Indian travellers, it reduces friction arising from currency exchange and card usage abroad by enabling payments through a familiar domestic method. The feature is expected to roll out soon.

The collaboration further builds on PhonePe’s existing online tokenisation capabilities through Unified Online Tokenisation. Under the model, users can save a Visa card once and use it across participating e-commerce merchants, creating a more optimised checkout experience. Millions of consumers are already experiencing this functionality on the PhonePe platform.

Alongside these consumer-facing innovations, the partnership also targets a key barrier for small businesses: the cost and complexity of accepting card payments. Through Smart Accept, merchants can accept card transactions directly on their smartphones without investing in a dedicated card POS device.

Customers can pay by tapping a physical card or a tokenised mobile wallet against the merchant’s smartphone, turning the device into a card-acceptance terminal. According to the companies, the solution reduces the cost of card-present device ownership to zero while onboarding and optimising commercial rates. Smart Accept integrates with PhonePe’s existing QR dashboard, allowing merchants to view card and QR transactions through a single interface to simplify reconciliation and dispute resolution.

These efforts collectively signal an effort to create a more unified payment experience for both consumers and merchants. For consumers, the partnership aims to reduce dependence on physical cards while expanding payment acceptance throughout a wider range of use cases. For merchants, particularly micro and small businesses, the partnership strives to lower the barriers to card acceptance while consolidating payment management into a single ecosystem.

The partnership positions PhonePe as a single interface through which users can access multiple Visa-powered payment experiences across online commerce, physical retail and international travel. More broadly, it reflects how India’s payments ecosystem is increasingly moving towards experiences that are not just digital-first, but also cardless, borderless and device-driven.

As digital payments become embedded across more aspects of everyday commerce, collaborations of this nature are likely to shape the next phase of innovation, one where the distinction between online and offline payments, domestic and international transactions, and cards and smartphones becomes increasingly invisible to the end user.