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, like Yoley.
What you need
- An iPhone XS or later running a current version of iOS.
- A payments app that supports Tap to Pay on iPhone — Yoley is one of them.
- A merchant account. In Yoley, this is handled for you — your payments are processed by Monek, a UK FCA-regulated processor.
That’s it. No card reader. No batteries. No Bluetooth handshake that fails at 90% signal at the customer’s back door.
What it costs in Yoley
Tap to Pay on iPhone in Yoley runs at 0.99% per transaction on the Pro plan (£9.99/month). Card payments through a payment link (which don’t require Tap to Pay) run at 1.49% per transaction on both Free and Pro.
Some comparison: a typical UK card reader charges 1.69–1.75% per transaction plus monthly rental. On a £500 boiler service, Tap to Pay at 0.99% costs you £4.95 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
In Yoley you have both. Here’s when each is the right pick:
- Tap to Pay on iPhone (0.99%) — use when the customer is physically in front of you and has their card or Apple Pay ready. Fastest, cheapest, no dependence on them remembering to pay later.
- Payment link on the invoice (1.49%) — 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.
- Pay by Bank (Open Banking, free) — use on Pro for bigger invoices where saving 1.49% on £5,000 is a real number. Instant bank transfer, no fees.
How to turn it on
In Yoley, upgrade to Pro from the Pricing screen, then go to Settings → Take Payment → Enable Tap to Pay on iPhone. Apple runs a short setup flow the first time — it’s an iOS-level permission, not a Yoley one. After that, every time you raise an invoice you’ll see an “Accept payment now” button that opens the Tap to Pay screen.
Full step-by-step is in the FAQ — Tap to Pay section.
The practical win
Tap to Pay is less about the fee delta (though 0.99% vs 1.49% vs 1.75% does add up) 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 cash cleared. 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?”