Mumbai, 11 September 2026 – At the Global Fintech Festival, 2026, Visa and the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) announced their intent to explore collaboration aimed at enhancing tourism discovery and digital commerce experiences in India.

The proposed collaboration seeks to bring together Visa’s expertise in trusted digital commerce and intelligent discovery experiences with ONDC’s open network infrastructure, with the shared objective of simplifying how travellers discover experiences, itineraries and tourism offerings across the country. The exploration aims to make tourism discovery more seamless and accessible while helping travellers connect with destinations, experiences, and local businesses across India.

Speaking at the Global Fintech Festival 2026, Suresh Sethi, Group Country Manager, India & South Asia, Visa, said, “India has taken a very futuristic approach in terms of how we can digitally connect people, and that is on open networks. When a global Indian is travelling out, or when somebody is coming from overseas, you are really looking for places where you can discover the experiences you can get in India.

We also see that a lot of agents are now being used to curate and create journeys, helping people discover experiences. India has its own homegrown digital public infrastructure creating opportunities for digital commerce, and we realise that tourism can be a very important asset where ONDC can serve as the digital infrastructure for tourism in the country.

Everything related to tourism, whether discovering experiences, cities or travel itineraries, as well as small and medium businesses of the ecosystem can potentially be housed in one place. ONDC brings the trust of a homegrown India digital public infrastructure, while Visa brings trusted discovery experiences. The two coming together can create a superlative experience for anybody looking at coming to India as a destination. We are delighted to be exploring this opportunity with ONDC.”

Hrushikesh Mehta, Chief Business Officer, Financial Services, ONDC, said, “At ONDC, our North Star is creating markets for sellers and choice for buyers, whether it is in retail, financial services, logistics or tourism. We have facilitated more than 500 million lifetime transactions and continue to expand the network across sectors.

Tourism is an important opportunity for us. We have support from the Ministry of Tourism and Culture to help build the tourism track and help drive tourism in the country. But you also need strong demand-side participation. We are very keen to work with Visa to see what we can do together to make that happen and help connect travellers with the diverse experiences that India has to offer.”

As part of this exploration, Visa and ONDC will evaluate opportunities to leverage open network principles, trusted commerce and digital innovation to create richer tourism discovery experiences and support India’s ambition of becoming an even more accessible and attractive destination for travellers. The collaboration will also explore ways to support tourism participation across destinations, regions and local economies through an open and trusted digital ecosystem.