Visa widens Handwave deal to put palm biometric payments on its acceptance platform in Europe

Handwave has expanded its agreement with Visa so that cards can be enrolled into its palm-based payment platform using Visa tokenisation, authentication and fraud tooling, including Decision Manager for real-time monitoring. The companies are working to integrate the solution into Visa's Acceptance Platform for European acquirers and merchants, with Visa adding market development and marketing support.

The launch region is the Baltic states, with retail pilots expected during 2026 and expansion into further European markets after that.

Biometric acceptance at the counter has repeatedly stalled in Europe on enrolment and liability rather than on hardware, and routing enrolment through Visa tokenisation is an attempt to solve exactly that half. Doing it inside Visa's Acceptance Platform matters more than the palm reader itself: it is the path by which a European acquirer could offer this without integrating a separate vendor. It stays small until a named retailer and a named acquirer appear.

Which Baltic retailers run the 2026 pilots, which European acquirers pick it up through Visa's Acceptance Platform, and whether Mastercard answers with an equivalent enrolment route.

• thepaypers.com