Tap to Pay on iPhone
Apple (Hacker News):
Apple today announced plans to introduce Tap to Pay on iPhone. The new capability will empower millions of merchants across the US, from small businesses to large retailers, to use their iPhone to seamlessly and securely accept Apple Pay, contactless credit and debit cards, and other digital wallets through a simple tap to their iPhone — no additional hardware or payment terminal needed. Tap to Pay on iPhone will be available for payment platforms and app developers to integrate into their iOS apps and offer as a payment option to their business customers. Stripe will be the first payment platform to offer Tap to Pay on iPhone to their business customers, including the Shopify Point of Sale app this spring.
[…]
Once Tap to Pay on iPhone becomes available, merchants will be able to unlock contactless payment acceptance through a supporting iOS app on an iPhone XS or later device. At checkout, the merchant will simply prompt the customer to hold their iPhone or Apple Watch to pay with Apple Pay, their contactless credit or debit card, or other digital wallet near the merchant’s iPhone, and the payment will be securely completed using NFC technology. No additional hardware is needed[…]
I guess merchants will still need to have magnetic/chip card readers, but this should be more convenient in many circumstances.
I’m surprised to see Apple announce it in a press release—maybe this is about getting ahead of the people who dig into software releases to find unannounced features.
[…]
Also absent is any mention of the iPad, with good reason: current iPads don’t have NFC chips built-in.
Then vs. Now
Previously:
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“I guess merchants will still need to have magnetic/chip card readers, but this should be more convenient in many circumstances.”
In many places here in Europe, hardly anyone pays using the chip (and magnetic strip payments are all but extinct), the vast majority of payments payments are NFC (it can vary by country, of course). Once Tap to Pay is expanded to Europe, in many places an iPhone will be all the merchant needs. That will be huge I guess.
I find it impossible to be excited over this. Feels like something that might have kicked ass eight or nine years ago.
Then again, last time I was in the US it was like visiting the stone age. Magnetic strip plus checking the signature on the back of the card was the norm. One place had chip plus pin code. And that was in San Fransisco.
> Magnetic strip plus checking the signature on the back of the card was the norm.
Even in small towns, that hasn't been the case in at least a few years, and in larger areas, it's been close to or over a decade. I don't know when you were here, and obviously we were late to the game on chip & PIN, but it's changed rapidly in the last 5 to 10 years. (Although we do chip without PIN most of the time, mostly because merchants think they're going to lose sales if customers have to take the "extra" time to input PINs.)
In my experience in the US, most cards are chip now but it's never chip+PIN except at "unmanned" terminals, like gas stations and train ticket machines. Otherwise you have to insert your card, there's no PIN option, and a signature is always required. And it's still antiquated at restaurants where they take your card away from the table, then bring back a paper receipt for you to sign. It's the dark ages compared to everywhere else, the only thing that's changed is they substituted the chip for the mag stripe -- but still require all of the 20th century receipts + signature that go along with it.
