Tap on Phone — NFC Card Acceptance
Led delivery turning Android devices into POS terminals via NFC — a flagship first-to-market launch that put card acceptance into the hands of merchants without dedicated POS hardware.
- Merchants using Tap on Phone
- ~350K
- Global telco/wallet to launch
- 1st
- Industry recognitions
- 3
Context
Merchant card acceptance had long been gated by the cost and logistics of dedicated POS hardware. JazzCash set out to change that by turning the Android phones merchants already owned into certified card-acceptance terminals using NFC. As the project manager owning end-to-end delivery, I coordinated across engineering, product, payment-network certification, compliance, and merchant operations to ship a first-of-its-kind launch for a telco and wallet — and to get merchants comfortable tapping a card on a phone.
Problem
Merchants needed low-cost card acceptance without dedicated POS hardware. The barrier wasn't just the cost of a terminal — it was trust, certification, and the dependency web of getting a phone-based payment flow approved by the card networks.
Approach
Led delivery turning Android devices into POS terminals via NFC. This was the first global telco/wallet to launch the service, which meant there was no prior playbook to copy — every dependency, certification path, and merchant-trust concern had to be mapped and de-risked from scratch. I drove the programme through payment-network certification, engineering delivery, and a merchant-readiness rollout, keeping cross-functional squads aligned around clear milestones.
Impact
~350K merchants now use Tap on Phone. The product received Mastercard's 'Pioneering Telco to Launch Tap on Phone' recognition (EDGE 2024, Dubai), 'Best Use of Creativity & Innovation' at the Pakistan Digital Awards, and a GLOMO Best Fintech Innovation nomination.
Insight
The blocker to merchant card acceptance wasn't hardware cost alone — it was trust and certification: getting merchants comfortable tapping a card on a phone, and getting the solution through payment-network certification.
Learning
Tap on Phone was my first fintech deployment, and I learned the payments domain — certification, card acceptance, the dependency web — while delivering a flagship launch. It proved to me that rigorous dependency and stakeholder management lets you ship successfully even in a domain you're still mastering.
Key takeaways
- First-to-market launches succeed when dependency mapping starts before engineering, not after.
- Payment-network certification is the long pole — plan the timeline around it.
- Merchant trust is a delivery workstream, not just a marketing one.
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