For years the standard way for a tradesperson to take a card payment on site was: own a card reader, carry it around, charge it, pair it with your phone. That’s ended. Tap to Pay on iPhone turns your phone itself into a contactless card reader — no hardware, no rental, no Bluetooth pairing. If you take payments on site, it’s the biggest workflow upgrade of the last five years.
What Tap to Pay on iPhone actually is
Tap to Pay on iPhone is an Apple platform feature that lets an iPhone accept contactless card payments and mobile wallet taps (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay) directly through the phone’s built-in NFC chip. You hold the customer’s card against the back of your iPhone for a second or two; it clicks; it’s done. No card reader, no cable, no extra device.
It’s available through apps that support it — it’s not a setting built into iOS itself. You have to use a payments app that’s enabled Tap to Pay. It’s coming soon to Yoley — Monek, which processes Yoley payments, is building it under its agreement with Apple.
What you need
- An iPhone XS or later running a current version of iOS.
- A payments app that supports Tap to Pay on iPhone — it’s coming soon to Yoley.
- A merchant account. In Yoley, this is your own Monek Processing Account (Monek Merchant Services Limited is FCA-authorised), with no application fee and no monthly fee.
That’s it. No card reader. No batteries. No Bluetooth handshake that fails at 90% signal at the customer’s back door.
What card payments cost in Yoley
Tap to Pay on iPhone isn’t in Yoley yet — it’s coming soon. Card payments through the payment link on every Yoley invoice work today, through your own Monek Processing Account: 0.99% + 5p per transaction on personal cards, 1.99% + 5p on business cards and 2.99% + 5p on foreign-issued cards. There’s no application fee and no monthly fee, you’re only charged on successful payments, and the money is paid out two working days later.
Some comparison: a typical UK card reader charges 1.69–1.75% per transaction plus monthly rental. On a £500 boiler service paid by personal card through a Yoley payment link, you pay £5.00 in fees; a typical card reader at 1.75% costs £8.75 — and that’s before any monthly hardware cost.
When to use Tap to Pay vs a payment link
Once Tap to Pay arrives in Yoley, you’ll have both. Here’s when each is the right pick:
- Tap to Pay on iPhone (coming soon) — use when the customer is physically in front of you and has their card or Apple Pay ready. Fastest, and no dependence on them remembering to pay later.
- Payment link on the invoice (from 0.99% + 5p, available now) — use when the customer isn’t there when you finish, for commercial or landlord work, or when the customer prefers to pay from a desktop.
When can I use it in Yoley?
Tap to Pay on iPhone is coming soon to Yoley — Monek is building it under its agreement with Apple. When it arrives, Apple runs a short setup flow the first time you use it — it’s an iOS-level permission, not a Yoley one. Until then, every Yoley invoice carries a secure payment link your customer can pay by card or Apple Pay, on the spot or later.
Fees and payouts are covered in the FAQ — payments section.
The practical win
Tap to Pay is less about fees and more about what it changes on the job: you no longer have to “send the invoice and hope”. You finish the work, the customer’s standing there, you take the payment on the spot, you leave with the job paid for. The “pays in 30 days” problem shrinks dramatically — because the fastest thing to ask someone is “can you just tap your card on my phone, please?”