“No fraud” enabled through card tokenisation on mobile devices: PhonePe founder Rahul Chari

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], September 9 (ANI): PhonePe Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO) and founder Rahul Chari on Wednesday dismissed concerns over the security of card tokenisation on mobile devices, asserting that there is “no fraud” that gets enabled through card tokenization, even as broader applications of tokenisation and blockchain may raise certain concerns.
Speaking to ANI on the sidelines of the Global Fintech Festival (GFF) 2026 in Mumbai, Chari said tokenisation is a much broader concept and should not be viewed solely through the lens of card payments. 
“I think tokenization has a much broader concept, whether it comes to tokenization for smart contracts, etc.,” he said, stressing, “Blockchain technology is a much larger piece…some aspects of it may have some concerns, but specifically with card tokenization, there is no concern.”
Rejecting the claims around the use of card tokenisation on mobile devices, he added, “I don't think that is actually completely a misconception…there is no fraud that gets enabled through card tokenization on mobile devices.”
PhonePe and Visa on Wednesday announced the launch of three new payment solutions — Tap to Pay, Cross Border Scan to Pay and Smart Accept — at the Global Fintech Festival (GFF) 2026.
As per the companies, this partnership makes PhonePe the first app in India to offer Cross Border Scan to Pay for international transactions.
With the launch, PhonePe has also become the first app to offer consumers a suite of three key Visa capabilities: Online Device Tokenization, Tap to Pay and Cross Border Scan to Pay. The platform will also enable micro-merchants to accept card payments through its Smart Accept solution.
As per Chari, Now, that's been there for a while, right, in the ecosystem, but what we're also bringing to the table is now all the small merchants who don't have the POS device for accepting cards, we are now enabling Visa Accept on the phone using the Phone Pay for Business app. 
Explaining how the feature works, Chari said consumers who have saved their Visa cards on the PhonePe app can make credit card payments at small merchants using the PhonePe for Business app with Visa Accept.
“So, now a consumer who saved their Visa card on the Phone Pay Consumer app can go to a small merchant who has the Phone Pay for Business app with Visa Accept and just phone to phone they can make a credit card payment.”
On the convenience and security of Tap to Pay compared with carrying a physical Visa card, Chari said, “I think not carrying a card itself and yet being able to do a transaction is the ease and the convenience.”
“From a security perspective, it rides on the same tokenization technology that's been there for a while and is already operating at scale across various markets in the world, and we're just bringing it more to a larger set of users in India,” he added. (ANI)