Live Payments partners with Visa to launch Tap to Phone 

One of Australia’s leading payment providers, Live Payments has partnered with Visa to help Australian small and micro businesses accept digital payments securely and conveniently using Visa technology.

Live Payments will utilise Visa’s Tap to Phone technology to transform a merchant’s smartphone into a point-of-sale with no additional hardware or device required. Participating merchants will be able to accept payments from any contactless-enabled Visa card, device or wearable, which a customer simply taps to pay against the merchant’s smartphone or tablet.

“This is opening another door to the digital economy for small businesses. By making it easier to accept digital payments anywhere, anytime, Tap to Phone is creating new ways for small and micro businesses to reach customers, prevent lost sales, and support cash flow,” Visa head of merchant sales and acquiring for Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific, Brian McGrory said.

Despite Tap to Phone being new to the Australian market, a YouGov study shows nearly half (45%) would already be likely to use the payment option if available, citing ease of use (50%), time savings (44%), security (43%) and eliminating the need to carry cash (42%) as the most popular reasons.

“Given the rapid adoption of digital payments and the major role smartphones play in our day-to-day lives, we expect Tap to Phone will become an increasingly popular way to pay among Australian consumers,” McGrory added.

Live Payments CEO, Reuven Barukh added, “This is an exciting partnership for Live Payments. Our integration of Visa’s Tap to Phone solution will revolutionise the way customers and small businesses make and receive payments. Merchants across the board have had to rapidly change how they do business, and this new solution will facilitate the type of seamless, flexible and no fuss payment processing that people are looking for.”

Live Payments has also integrated their Tap to Phone solution with Cybersource, Visa’s global payment and fraud management platform that provides a one-stop solution for managing payments.

Image: Brian McGrory (Visa) and Reuven Barukh (Live Payments).