PayPal plans to support iPhone's Tap to Pay in its PayPal and Venmo iOS apps “soon”, add Apple Pay to its checkout options on merchant platforms, and more
The PayPal and Venmo iOS apps will soon offer Apple's Tap to Pay on iPhone functionality, allowing merchants that use PayPal …
Context & Ripple Effects
PayPal and Venmo had already been extending their wallets beyond peer-to-peer transfers: Pay with Venmo was aimed at purchases from PayPal merchants, and the companies later outlined NFC-based in-store payments. PayPal’s new plans connect those earlier merchant ambitions to Apple’s iPhone acceptance capability.
Apple introduced Tap to Pay on iPhone with Stripe as its launch partner and identified Shopify among the initial partners. PayPal’s addition brings its PayPal and Venmo apps into that partner-enabled acceptance model while also putting Apple Pay into PayPal merchant checkout flows.
First-order effects
- Merchants using the PayPal or Venmo iOS apps will gain a planned route to accept contactless payments through Tap to Pay on iPhone, rather than relying solely on PayPal’s existing merchant-payment paths.
- PayPal merchant platforms will add Apple Pay as a checkout option, expanding the payment methods available to their merchants’ customers.
Second-order effects
- PayPal becomes another app partner for Apple’s Tap to Pay rollout alongside the previously named Stripe and Shopify, giving merchants a broader set of provider-led ways to use iPhone-based acceptance.
- PayPal and Venmo can tie their earlier online and in-store payment efforts more closely to the same merchant base, making merchant-platform integration a more important distribution channel for both brands.
Third-order effects
- If more wallet and processor apps adopt Tap to Pay, contactless acceptance is likely to be mediated increasingly by payment platforms’ software relationships with merchants rather than by a distinct acceptance product.
- The combination of Apple Pay at checkout and Tap to Pay in merchant apps points toward payment platforms competing across both online checkout and physical acceptance, not treating them as separate products.
The trend: Mobile payment platforms are converging online checkout, wallet payments, and phone-based merchant acceptance within the same merchant software relationships.