Taxi drivers in Hong Kong can now accept contactless payments on a standard Android NFC smartphone using Visa’s Tap to Phone software point of sale (sPOS) solution.

Visa has made the solution available for taxi drivers in the region, enabling passengers to pay their fares by tapping their contactless card on a driver’s Android smartphone, choose to add a tip and opt to receive a digital receipt for the transaction.

To date, about 100 drivers from Chung Sing Taxi have registered to use the service “with a few hundred more to follow in the coming months but [Visa] said it aimed to woo the city’s 18,163 taxis with the cashless payment service,” according to a South China Morning Post report.

Visa is making Tap to Phone available to Hong Kong taxi drivers in partnership with payment services provider Global Payments Asia-Pacific, and now aims to “reach out to minibuses and ferries to allow passengers to pay for small ticket items via its contactless scheme, which is already available on more than 6,000 franchised buses and would be put in place at MTR stations next year,” the publication says.

A short video shows how the Tap to Phone solution works.

Visa unveiled the Tap to Phone solution in January 2020, rolled out trials in more than 15 countries in October 2020 and launched pilots in six US cities in June 2021.

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