Verve Plans Phone Tap-to-Pay and AI-Assisted Payments

Verve plans to introduce a phone-based tap-to-pay service and eventually enable artificial intelligence assistants to make payments for customers, according to chief executive Vincent Ogbunude.

Ogbunude discussed the proposed capabilities on the Big Tech and Enterprise Stage at Moonshot by TechCabal on 29 October. He presented them as part of Verve’s efforts to make payments easier and reduce the steps involved in completing transactions.

Under the proposed phone payment service, customers would be able to pay using a device they already carry rather than a physical card. The source did not provide a launch date or indicate that the service is already available.

AI assistants could handle purchases

The longer-term plan involves what the source describes as agentic payments. In this model, a customer would give instructions to an AI assistant, which could then find a suitable purchase and complete the payment on the customer’s behalf.

Ogbunude said, “The greatest cost in payments is friction,” while discussing the planned phone and AI-enabled features. The proposals also raise questions about whether customers and banks will be comfortable allowing software to spend money for them, an issue that has not been resolved in the information available.

Verve is the card scheme of Interswitch and is described by the source as Nigeria’s largest card scheme. Ogbunude said the company had 130 million cards at the time of his statement. TechCabal had reported in December that Verve had passed 100 million cards and was moving into contactless payments and tokenisation.

Part of a wider payments shift

The proposed AI payment capability follows similar announcements from Visa and Mastercard in 2025. Both global card networks announced programmes intended to allow AI agents to make payments for cardholders.

Nigeria’s payment infrastructure has also continued to process large volumes of digital transactions. Figures from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System show that the NIBSS Instant Payment system handled about 11.2 billion transactions valued at ₦1.07 quadrillion in 2024.

Ogbunude described Interswitch’s development over time as a series of attempts to remove barriers from payments. The company’s network enabled customers to use cards at any bank’s ATM, after customers had previously needed to visit their own bank’s branch to withdraw cash. Interswitch later developed Quickteller, point-of-sale terminals and Verve.

Verve has not specified when its phone tap-to-pay service will launch or how and when AI-assisted payments will be introduced.