Visa Tap

Unlock contactless ’Tap’ use cases on consumer’s phone

available for use by

Acquirer Banks

Merchants

Independent Developers

Regional Availability

View Details
  • N. America
  • Asia-Pacific
  • Europe
  • CEMEA
  • LAC

FEES & TERMS

Free to use in Sandbox. Contact Visa for fees in Production. Product Terms below.

A single point of access to unlock ‘Tap’ use cases on a consumer’s own device

Visa Tap: Revolutionizing Transactions with a Simple Tap

As tapping contactless cards on merchant devices becomes the norm, Visa is enhancing convenience and security by bringing EMV contactless transaction capabilities directly to consumers' devices. Visa Tap empowers consumers to use their contactless cards with just a tap on their own or others' phones, enhancing various transaction experiences.

Visa simplifies the integration of these capabilities for partners by offering Kernel as a Service, a single-point integration solution for enabling Visa Tap functionalities on COTS devices.

Visa Tap Use Cases:

Tap to Add Card lets cardholders add their card with a tap

Tap to Add Card helps Visa cardholders avoid the effort and errors of manual card entry by letting them simply tap to add their card to a participating digital wallet or merchant app.

Tap to P2P makes sending money to friends and family as simple as a tap

Tap to P2P lets Visa cardholders send and receive money with friends and family quickly and easily using a participating digital wallet. With the tap of a friend's card or phone to your cardholder’s phone the money is securely transferred in real-time* with Visa Direct.

Actual funds availability depends on U.S. receiving financial institutions.

Tap to Confirm can help increase approval rates and reduce fraud

Tap to Confirm is a security step-up to confirm a cardholder is in possession of their card for things like high-value money transfers, updating account information or continuing with a merchant transaction. Resulting in higher approval rates and reduced fraud, all from a cardholder experience that's as simple as a tap.

Tap to Activate makes Visa card activation quick and easy

When a cardholder receives their new card, they just tap it to their participating phone using their issuer mobile app for secure card authentication and cryptogram validation.

These enhancements to Visa Tap use cases demonstrate our commitment to providing secure, efficient, and user-friendly transaction solutions for both consumers and partners.

 

Use Case Benefits

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Single point integration to unlock multiple card tap use cases on consumer’s own device.

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Fortifying transactions on a consumer’s own device with the security and convenience of an EMV chip transaction.

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Potential decrease in fraud and consumer friction.

Why use it?

Faster Go to Market

Visa Tap SDK that has been pre-certified reducing certification overhead and  helps with a quicker market launch.

Updated Feature Set

The Visa Tap SDK will be constantly updated with latest features, new use cases and security standards. 

Packaged Branding

Visa Tap SDK comes with the Visa Multi Sensory Branding SDK incorporated in it, reducing the branding requirement overhead for partners to implement the Visa Tap SDK.

How Does it Work?

  1. Merchant / wallet app integrates with the Visa Tap SDK. 
  2. Visa Tap SDK drives backend integration of COTS devices to kernel services. 
  3. The kernel backend returns appropriate results depending on the use case. 

APIs Included

Device Enrollment API

Device Enrollment API is used to enroll a COTS device to Visa Tap when it is invoked for the first time by the consumer for any of the permitted use cases.

Visa Tap SDK for Android

Visa Tap SDK is a downloadable thin client SDK provided by Visa which talks to the backend Visa Kernel as a Service and facilitates Visa card read and EMV cryptogram information.

Ready to start with Visa Tap?

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