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A 3-year-old technology enabling merchants to accept contactless payments using a regular smart phone with no special hardware has bloomed with a global year-over-year growth rate of 200%. That rate is even higher in the United States, United Kingdom, and Brazil, the three countries with the highest adoption rates, Visa Inc. says.
The growth rate in these three markets is 234% on the VisaNet system. Visa did not release actual usage data. Visa announced the Tap to Phone technology in 2020. Versions of it are available for Android and Apple smart phones. Apple’s service launched in 2022. For its own offering, Google uses the name Tap to Pay on Android.
One advantage of the technology is that no external device is needed to accept payments. The NFC chip in contactless cards is able to communicate with the NFC chip in many smart phones, using dedicated software to secure and process the transactions. This process is often called softPOS because it eschews dedicated POS hardware.
This option is especially popular with small businesses, which account for nearly 30% of all Tap to Phone merchants, Visa says. Adoption is particularly high among beauty and barbershop operators, restaurants, and retailers.
One of the drivers of the growth is that the technology is suited for merchants of any size, Visa says. “Tap to Phone is a tech equalizer that allows sellers of all sizes, including new small businesses and micro-sellers, to access the same digital payment tools as large retailers,” Visa says in a statement to Digital Transactions News.
Other factors are expanding support from processors and acquirers and the increasing confidence small businesses have in digital payments. New use cases have helped—such as Tap to App Card, which enables users to add eligible credit and debit cards to digital wallets with a tap; Tap to Confirm to authenticate a high-value transfer; and Tap to Send and Request money, which enables tapping a card to a device wallet to send funds—Visa says.
“The shift toward digital payments, particularly in cash-dominant markets, is driving the growth of Tap to Phone as businesses transition from cash-only to secure digital payments,” Visa says.
