PARIS, France, June 30. The smartphone is becoming a key platform for receiving and sending payments, Senior Vice President, Head of Commercial and Money Movement Solutions for Visa CEMEA (Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa), Shahebaz Khan,said during an information session at the Visa Payments Forum in Paris, Trend's special correspondent reports from the event.
According to him, the company is developing a suite of solutions that simplify both accepting and sending payments, turning smartphones into universal financial transaction tools.
He noted that a significant portion of users are already accustomed to managing their financial lives through mobile devices, while traditional barriers to accepting payments remain a key constraint for small businesses.
"We're building a suite of solutions around the phone and Visa card so you can both accept and send payments—both domestically and internationally," the Visa official also said.
He emphasized a particular focus on reducing barriers to accepting payments through Tap to Phone and Visa Accept technologies, which allow smartphones to be used as fully functional payment terminals.
Khan noted that traditional POS terminals remain expensive and not always economically feasible for small retailers, which limits the development of digital payments.
"We're essentially turning every smartphone into a payment acceptance device," the official emphasized.
He also cited the example of micro- and nano-merchants, including private sellers on social media, who can use Visa Accept to start accepting payments without a complex infrastructure.
According to him, such users can accept payments both offline via smartphone and remotely via payment links sent to customers.
Visa Accept, he noted, allows for almost instant merchant registration through a banking app, with initial transaction limits set that can be expanded as the business grows.
"As the business grows, financial institutions can upgrade these users to fully-fledged merchants with full payment capabilities," he said.
The company also notes that the combination of Tap to Phone and Visa Accept solutions has the potential to significantly expand the number of merchants accepting digital payments, including previously informal segments of the economy.
A separate business line is Visa Direct, which enables fund transfers to bank accounts, cards, and digital wallets within the global Visa network.
According to the company representative, the platform covers billions of endpoints and supports transactions in dozens of currencies and nearly two hundred countries, providing fast payouts and transfers for businesses and individuals.
