Why You Need to Accept Apple Pay: Reach More Customers and Reduce Fraud Too 

Apple Pay helps businesses reduce fraud and improve purchase success rates and is a preferred contactless payment method for customers too.  Here’s how to accept Apple Pay for your business.

Apple Pay is one of the most popular forms of contactless payment globally. Not only do most iPhone and Apple Watches have Apple Pay preloaded, but the payment method’s use of biometrics and encryption offers greater security than some other payment methods.

The number of iPhone users with Apple Pay has steadily risen to reach over 500 million in 2020, making it a highly popular international payment method (Statista). 

Not only does this popular payment method and digital wallet help prevent fraud, but research from Rapyd also found customers prefer contactless payments too, with 60% planning on using online and contactless payments instead of physical currency.

With a trend towards more contactless payments, its quick adoption is likely to continue to grow. Better yet, Apple Pay’s security features mean lower chargebacks and higher purchase success rates for merchants, making transactions easier, convenient, and more secure.

How Does Apple Pay Work?

Apple Pay launched in 2014. It allows Apple users to make secure online and in-person payments using their personal devices. Users can set up Apple Pay by clicking on the Wallet icon to start adding their cards to the wallet, using the camera or entering the information manually.

Apple Pay encrypts the data using tokenization. This stores a virtual account number that only the device can decrypt to process a transaction. The device replaces the card at a contactless point of sale terminal. 

Apple Pay uses Near Field Communications (NFC), which minimizes the risk of a card being “skimmed” or the data being stolen when it is swiped. It is simple to use and offers customers greater security when making purchases. For businesses, this helps to reduce costly chargebacks, improves the success rate of completing purchases, all while being quick and easy to implement at no additional cost.  

Why You Need to Accept Apple Pay: Reach More Customers and Reduce Fraud Too

How Does NFC Work for Payments? 

Contactless payments use radio frequency identification technology and near-field communication (NFC) to allow the card or device to communicate to the terminal. With NFC, users tap their payment card or move their device close to the point-of-sale terminal.  

Contactless payment cuts down the risk to both the consumer and the merchant. It is more secure than using magnetic stripes on the back of payment cards. Encrypting the information submitted through the merchant terminal makes it difficult to intercept and steal. Contactless payments are growing in popularity and the market is forecast to grow to $19.3 billion by 2026 (Valuates Reports).

Why You Should Use Apple Pay for Business

• Apple Pay means a faster checkout process – Users do not have to enter their card or personal data for each transaction. The user does not need to open their wallet to take out a card or cash. The information is already stored within Apple Pay on their device and used to complete the payment with a single click or tap. This allows payments to be processed faster than either magnetic-stripe cards or chip card payments.
• Greater security  – Apple Pay incorporates several layers of security to protect users’ personal and payment information. The device is secured with Touch ID, Face ID, or the user’s own passcode, so only the user can make payments with the device.
• Reduced chargebacks – The payment card information is encrypted and securely stored and not actually transmitted to the merchant. This greatly reduces fraud and costly chargebacks. In 2020, a $1 fraud cost US retailers an average of $3.36 in 2020, meaning merchants with a high volume of transactions can suffer large losses if unable to prevent chargebacks (LexisNexis).
• Making payments is safe and convenient – Customers can use their device to make purchases. They do not even need to take out their wallet, or even remember to bring it with them to a store. As the trend to move to a cashless society accelerates, Apple Pay means that users are not required to touch card readers, or enter their pin on screen. 

How to Use Apple Pay In Person

As more customers look to use Apple Pay, business owners need to offer it as a payment method. Implementation is very straightforward.  

• Check with your payment processor to see if the current hardware supports Apple Pay. If not, replace it with an NFC-enabled terminal that can accept contactless payments.
• Once tested, train staff to take payments using the new POS system. 
• When customers want to pay using Apple Pay, they hold their phone or watch over the terminal. The device’s NFC chip transmits the encrypted payment information to the terminal. Once the payment is accepted and the transaction completed, the terminal displays four green lights.  

How to Use Apple Pay Online

If you are using third-party payment plugins for popular ecommerce platforms, like Shopify, Wix or Ecwid check to ensure that your payment service provider (PSP) supports Apple Pay. Once enabled, merchants may need to work with web developers to add the Pay With Apple Pay to their checkout page.

After this is set up, customers can select this as their payment method to complete their transaction. Customers can bypass manually entering any card information by setting up verification through using a passcode or biometrics like fingerprint scanning or Face ID.

How Much Does it Cost to Accept Apple Pay for Businesses?

Here’s another benefit of accepting Apple Pay: Apple does not charge merchants or customers for using Apple Pay either online or in-store. However, credit card issuers do pay .15% of an Apple Pay transaction as a guarantee of secure tokenization. Any additional fees will be determined by whether your customer pays online or in person.

Payments made using Apple Pay in person are considered to be “card present” transactions, while online payments are considered “card not present” transactions and generally have a higher fee than card-present transactions. Both are subject to the payment processor’s rates and fees. Merchants also may need to pay to upgrade to an NFC-enabled terminal.  

Sources

Statista. “Number of Apple Pay users worldwide as of September 2020” Dec 9, 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/911914/number-apple-pay-users/.

Valuates Reports. “Contactless Payments Market Size to Reach USD 19.3 Billion by 2026 – Valuates Reports.” prnewswire.com, 04 Aug 2020.

LexisNexis.(2020). 11th annual LexisNexis Risk Solutions 2020 True Cost of Fraud Study: e-Commerce/Retail Edition. https://risk.lexisnexis.com/about-us/press-room/press-release/20200721-tcof-retail-study