Tap to Pay on iPhone & Privacy

Tap to Pay on iPhone is designed to allow you to accept contactless payments on your mobile device in a secure and private way.


Enabling Tap to Pay on iPhone

Tap to Pay on iPhone allows you to use your iPhone to accept contactless payments from a customer’s mobile device or contactless card through an enabled app. To enable Tap to Pay on iPhone, sign in with the Apple Account you use as a merchant. The Apple Account you use will be associated with a merchant account for merchant account management and fraud prevention and compliance purposes. You can unlink your Apple Account from a merchant account by contacting Apple Support.

Using Tap to Pay on iPhone

When using Tap to Pay on iPhone, Apple processes your data in accordance with our agreements with you and your payment service provider, and as required by law. When initiating Tap to Pay on iPhone and opening a virtual payment terminal, Apple collects data necessary to open a valid session, such as a token that includes the identity of your payment services provider and merchant, information about the merchant such as business name, and identifiers for your virtual payment terminal. Apple also collects a token indicating that your hardware is secure. If validated, Apple sends back a valid session token to your device, which your device will use to execute the transaction. To execute a transaction, your device will send encrypted transaction information to Apple. Apple does not decrypt this transaction information. Apple authenticates the transaction using information about the session token, device and merchant, but not the content of the encrypted transaction. If authenticated, Apple helps to further protect the transaction by changing the encryption key to a key that only your payment services partner can decrypt. Apple collects and maintains information about Tap to Pay on iPhone transactions, such as transaction amount, for 25 days as required for compliance with payment card industry and similar requirements.

Signing Up with Apple Business Register

You can connect a merchant account from a point-of-sale application to Apple Business Register using your Apple Account, which will link your Apple Account to the merchant account within Apple Business Register. Your use of Apple Business Register is subject to the Apple Business Register Terms of Service at register.apple.com/tou/abr/latest/en and Apple’s Privacy Policy at apple.com/uk/privacy.

Tap to Pay on iPhone data that can no longer be tied to you may be retained for a limited period of time to generally improve the service.

Where Apple acts as a data controller with respect to the processing of personal data relating to Tap to Pay on iPhone, such activities are provided by Apple Payments Services LLC or its subsidiary, Apple Processing LLC. At all times, information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/uk/privacy. Use of a third-party point-of-sale application is subject to the terms of that application’s service and its privacy policy.

Published Date: September 20, 2024