The EU just forced Apple to open up the iPhone’s tap-to-pay feature — now PayPal is moving in
Can you imagine being able to tap your iPhone and pay for something without having to use Apple Pay? That situation is very real for German iPhone users, with reports that PayPal’s tap-to-pay feature is now available to use in the country (via iPhone Ticker).
Actually, this isn’t a huge surprise. The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) already forced Apple to open iPhone NFC chips to third-party payment providers. PayPal also announced that it would introduce this feature in Germany in a press release at the start of the month.
The feature is for iPhone only for now. Sorry, Android users, but it should work with payment terminals that support Mastercard. Based on my limited experience of travelling in Germany, that isn’t likely to be difficult.
The Verge notes that this isn’t the first third-party tap-to-pay system to come to iPhones. While Norway isn’t actually a member of the EU, local payment app Vipps was the first company to take advantage of the newly opened NFC system back in December.
Obviously, PayPal is a much bigger deal, and it’s unlikely that it will limit tap-to-pay to the German market for long — assuming everything goes well.
Could this come to the U.S. too?
While most of the DMA-imposed changes to iOS are limited to the EU, Apple has confirmed that it would be opening tap-to-pay in other regions as well — including the U.S. That process all kicked off with iOS 18.1, which arrived in October.
According to Apple, developers will be able to offer “in-app contactless transactions” for various things, including payments, car keys, transit passes, IDs, hotel room keys and even reward cards. Government ID support is also expected to arrive at some point in the future.
The changes also allow iPhone users to accept contactless payments via NFC. That means you can send money to your friends by tapping your phones together, rather than going through the motions of finding their account on Venmo or some other payment provider.
The appropriate APIs were made available to developers in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Brazil. It’s up to PayPal (or whoever else might be interested) to make it happen.
