As of July 2026, India’s digital payments ecosystem utilizes over 900 million payment tokens. Visa accounts for nearly 500 million of these tokens, following a 2022 Reserve Bank of India mandate that prohibited merchants from storing raw card data.
To improve user experience, Visa launched Payment Passkey in India on July 2, 2026. This system replaces one-time passwords with biometric authentication, such as fingerprint or facial recognition, to verify transactions in under a second.
The new authentication method aims to mitigate SIM-swap fraud by removing reliance on SMS-based codes. This shift aligns with the broader transition of India’s e-commerce sector to a fully tokenized card payment system.
In September 2026, Visa announced a partnership with PhonePe to integrate tokenized card services. The collaboration enables Tap to Pay functionality for contactless smartphone payments and provides cross-border Visa QR payment options across 14 markets.
