A payment terminal built around the iPhone
Apple announced Tap to Pay on iPhone on February 8, 2022, setting out plans for US merchants to accept contactless payments directly on compatible phones. The company described a service that would remove the need for a separate payment terminal or additional acceptance hardware.
The announcement covered Apple Pay, contactless credit and debit cards, and other digital wallets. It was a statement of planned availability during 2022, rather than confirmation that merchants could immediately start accepting payments.
Compatible hardware still needed merchant software
According to Apple, merchants would need an iPhone XS or a later model and an iOS app supporting the feature. At checkout, customers would bring a compatible payment card or wallet device close to the merchant’s iPhone to make their payment.
That software requirement is an important distinction: Apple was not announcing that every iPhone could automatically become a checkout terminal. Payment platforms and app developers would have to integrate the capability into the services they offered businesses.
Analysis: The proposed change concerned the equipment used to receive a payment, not the removal of the merchant’s payment-service relationship. Businesses could avoid a separate reader, but access would still depend on compatible hardware and a participating app.
Stripe was named as the first platform
Apple identified Stripe as the first payment platform scheduled to offer the capability to its business customers, including through Shopify’s Point of Sale app in spring 2022. It said further payment platforms and apps would follow later that year.
Those dates describe Apple’s rollout plans at the time of the announcement. They should not be read as evidence of when individual providers actually enabled the service or as a statement of its availability today.