Turn any Android smartphone or tablet into a device that can accept card payments. This is the goal of Visa Tap to Phone , the operator’s service in the digital payments sector that allows di accepting payments on Android devices equipped with NFC without the need for additional hardware. After a test phase that lasted about a year, the company is now expanding the geographic availability of the service that thus arrives in Italy with the hope of helping small and micro enterprises to do business more easily.

With Visa Tap to Phone the phone becomes the POS to accept payments

It has been possible for some time now to make payments using smartphones equipped with NFC and this possibility has driven the transformation towards contactless, which proved particularly useful during the pandemic. Let’s put it in perspective: according to a recent Visa survey, on 48% of individuals would not make purchases in a shop that offers means of payment that require direct contact with the cashier or with the POS and, on the other hand, purchases made with a contactless card increased by 40%.

Visa Tap to Phone allows you to use any Android device (phone or tablet) equipped with NFC instead of a POS to receive payments, similar to that launched by Mastercard with Tap on Phone. In this way, small and micro businesses are freed from the need for a fixed line, contracts with the bank to use a POS and so on. The 180 millions of SMEs in the world can thus accept payments anytime, anywhere – from in-store purchases until home delivery.

“It was only five years ago when Visa has set out to enable virtually any IoT or mobile device to make payments and today we are enabling many of these same devices to receive payments in a very simple way with Visa Tap to Phone “, says Mary Kay Bowman , global head of solutions for buyers and sellers at Visa. “With billions of phones in the world already available, the opportunity that comes with making them devices to accept payments is enormous. Visa Tap to Phone could be one of the ways to more deeply reinvent the physical shopping experience. “

The service has been available so far in countries such as Russia, South Africa, Japan and Peru and is now being expanded to 15 new markets including Italy, the UK and Brazil. The service is based on an application, freely downloadable and free from the Google Play Store. To be able to use it it is necessary that the banc