Let customers tap to pay, and take cards faster
Contactless is faster at the counter and counts as a card-present sale, which keeps it on the lower-risk, lower-interchange side of the ledger. Here is how tap works and why it is worth turning on.
Tap to pay lets a customer hold a contactless card or a phone near your reader and pay in about a second, no dip, no swipe. It runs on NFC, the same short-range radio in Apple Pay and Google Pay. The part that matters for your bill: a tap is a card-present sale, so it sits on the lower-risk, lower-interchange side of the ledger, next to chip, and well below a keyed number.
What is tap to pay?
Tap to pay is a contactless payment made by holding a card or phone within an inch or two of the reader. The chip in the card, or the secure element in the phone, talks to your terminal over NFC and sends a one-time code instead of the real card number. The customer never hands over the card. On newer setups, the reader can even be a phone itself, with no separate hardware at all.
- Contactless cards: most new Visa and Mastercard cards have the tap symbol and work out of the box.
- Mobile wallets: Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay live on the phone or watch and tap the same way.
- Tap on phone: some readers turn a standard phone into the terminal, useful for markets, delivery, and pop-ups.
Is tap to pay cheaper than a keyed sale?
Yes. A tap is card-present, and card-present sales carry lower interchange than keyed ones because they are lower risk. When a physical card or a phone is present and authenticated, fraud is far less likely, so the networks price it down. A keyed sale, where someone types the number by hand, adds roughly 0.2 to 0.5 percent in interchange on top, because the card cannot be verified the same way.
| How the card is taken | Risk level | Interchange effect |
|---|---|---|
| Tap (contactless) or chip | Card present, low | Lowest tier for the card type |
| Swipe (magstripe) | Card present, higher | Usually same tier, more fraud exposure |
| Keyed by hand | Card not present | Add ≈0.2% to 0.5% |
Illustrative interchange by how the card is taken. Card-present taps sit with chip; keyed adds risk cost.
A mobile wallet tap is not more expensive than a plastic tap. Apple Pay and Google Pay ride the same card-present rails. The wallet is just a safer wrapper around the same card.
Why does tap speed up the counter?
Tap clears in about a second, versus several seconds for a chip dip that has to stay inserted until the terminal releases it. Multiply a few saved seconds across a lunch rush or a market Saturday and it is real throughput. Shorter lines mean fewer walk-offs. Customers also like not handing over a card, and a phone tap often adds a fingerprint or face check that they do for free, which lowers your fraud risk too.
There is a well-worn worry that contactless is less secure. It is the opposite. A tap sends a one-time token, not your customer’s real card number, so even a captured transmission is useless. The card also has to be within an inch or two, for a moment, which is not how card fraud actually happens at scale. Tap is one of the safer ways to take a card in person.
On cost, remember what does and does not move. Turning on tap can lower your interchange by keeping sales card-present and pulling some away from keyed entry. Our markup does not move: it is a flat dime per transaction whether the customer taps, dips, or swipes, and it never goes up. The one charge beyond interchange and the dime is the yearly PCI compliance fee, shown to you in writing before you sign.
Want to see how much of your volume is tap versus keyed, and what the keyed part costs?
Analyze my statementIf your current terminal is more than a few years old, it may not support tap, which pushes some customers to slower chip or, worse, to keyed entry when the chip misreads. A reader that takes tap, chip, and wallets covers nearly every customer who walks in, and keeps the maximum share of your sales on the cheap, card-present side.
Questions, answered plainly
No. A tap is a card-present sale in the same low-interchange tier as a chip dip, and cheaper than a keyed entry. Whether the customer taps, dips, or swipes, the interchange tier is the same for that card, and our markup stays a flat dime either way.
No. Mobile wallet taps ride the same card-present rails as a contactless plastic card, so they land in the same interchange tier. The wallet adds a security layer, usually a fingerprint or face check, at no extra cost to you.
Yes, and it is one of the safer in-person methods. A tap sends a one-time token instead of the real card number, so intercepted data is useless, and the card has to be within an inch or two for a moment. That combination makes tap harder to defraud than a keyed or swiped sale.
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