Today’s announced plan is to introduce a new Tap to Pay on iPhone feature! This feature will allow compatible iPhones to accept payments, via apple pay, contactless credit or debit cards, and other digital wallets with no additional hardware required. This feature should be arriving on iPhones later this year, and it will allow merchants to accept contactless payments through supported ios apps, using an iPhone 10s or newer.
So at checkout, all you would have to do is simply hold your iPhone or Apple watch, a contactless debit or credit card, or other digital wallets near the merchant’s iPhone. Then the payment will be securely completed using NFC. So as of right now if a small business wants to accept tap to pay, it’s through the use of some additional hardware. Like one of those square card readers, which comes in a few different models.
That either works wirelessly or through a wired connection via lightning or 3.5-millimeter headphone jacks. So this would essentially eliminate the need for one of those and would allow any merchant to get up and running and accept tap to pay by simply having a compatible iPhone. Like what was mentioned earlier in iPhone 10s or newer, and theoretically, any small business that was apprehensive about expanding its payment solutions because of third-party hardware, getting it all set up, maybe it’s just too much. Well now it should just be super easy by downloading an app and just following some of the on-screen instructions and you should be up and running.
Later on, all you need to do is just kind of have your iPhone available for others to do, a tap to pay the payment via one of those methods that we listed earlier. Now Stripe will be the first payment platform to offer the tap to pay on iPhone to their business customers. Including the Shopify point of sale app this spring. And additional payment platforms and apps will be available and follow later this year, according to Apple.
Now Apple stores in the US will also roll out this feature later this year. And it appears that the feature will be exclusive to the US at launch, as there are no other countries mentioned at this time. So most major businesses probably won’t switch from whatever point of sale machines they’re currently using. But this could be a huge boost to smaller businesses restaurants etc. That you know maybe we’re not happy with the way they accepted payments in the past, or just want something easier and more streamlined.
Since this feature is being added in a kit for developers to adopt in their platforms, it is possible that apps like PayPal, Venmo, Zell, etc, could adopt this feature for an individual tap to pay use cases as well. So instead of having to go into your Venmo app, and choose the person, the amount the card, etc, you could just accept payment from someone using Apple pay, or better yet if you know someone that doesn’t have apple pay but they have one of those contactless debit or credit cards, and they need to send you money somehow, they can just tap it to your phone, and you can accept that money.
However, you will have to pay whatever fees are associated with that payment platform. this goes for no matter whether you are a small business, or if they ever open this up for individual use cases. All of the corresponding fees will still apply to whatever payment platform you decide to use in the future. Of course, I’d love to know your thoughts on all of this in the comments down below! Especially if you are a small business owner who maybe does not accept tap to pay, you know via some sort of third-party hardware or maybe you do and you’re looking to switch! Of course, I would love to know your thoughts, so don’t hesitate to leave your comment down below!
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