Without too much marketing, Apple introduced the option Tap-to-Pay on iPhone. This new system will allow compatible iPhone devices to accept contactless payments both through Apple Pay as well as from credit cards, contactless debit cards or other electronic wallets. And all this system is available without needing additional hardware. Only a compatible iPhone is enough.
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What is Tap to Pay on iPhone?
This new feature was announced by Apple in February 2022 and will allow iPhone devices to become payment terminals. POS (Point-of-Sale) terminal.
The function allows you to make contactless payments with iPhone, from Apple Pay, credit cards, debit cards and other digital wallets.
Basically, this new feature will save merchants additional hardware when implementing contactless payment methods.
How does Tap to Pay work on the iPhone?
The new feature is currently only intended for businesses, physical stores or restaurants that want to implement it contactless payment method. With a specific application installed on iOS, the merchant will be able to use a model of iPhone XS or more recently, to collect customer payments. For example, we can go to the restaurant, and when we ask to pay with the card or with Apple Pay, the waiter will only use an iPhone that we have to approach Apple Watch or our iPhone that we have Apple Pay, and payment will be made instantly. Payments are secured using NFC technology.
We can of course also use a contactless bank card or another type of electronic wallet to pay Tap to Pay.
Where and when is Tap to Pay available?
Stripe is the first company to announce that it will make this new feature available to business customers. Even the Shopify Point of Sale application will be available with this feature for its customers, starting this spring.
More and more companies offering payment solutions for business are expected to develop applications for the new service this year. Apple.
Apple announced that it will implement Tap to Pay in the company's stores in the USA, starting with the fall of 2022. In Apple Store.
This new feature is currently only available in the USA and the company Apple not yet talked about expansion in other countries. Most likely it is a market that the company knows very well and they can test the Tap to Pay opportunities before expanding it globally or to other countries.
What you need to know if you are a merchant and want to make Tap to Pay available to customers, is that this option only works if there is a specific application on the iPhone, of a contactless / online payment processor.
Compatible iPhone Tap to Pay
As I said before, if you are a merchant and want to implement this payment collection system for your customers, you will not need special hardware. The digital money transfer will be made contactless using NFC technology, in safe conditions.
All iPhone devices are compatible, starting with the iPhone XS up to the newest models. The condition is that iOS 15.4 or a newer version is installed and, of course, that you have the payment processor application installed, through which the money will reach your company.
Even though the iPhone 6, iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models are equipped with NFC technology, Apple did not allow running Tap to Pay on them.
Once this option is developed for the iPhone by more and more payment processors, it would not be excluded to see Tao to Pay on Apple Watch in the near future. That is if we take into account that Apple Watch are quite used for Apple Pay. With a single approach to the watches, the payment is made in a simple and fast way.
