I’ve always wondered why was it locked only to merchants, anyone knows?
Because as it’s currently designed Apple is not handling any of the actual transactions- those are handled by the Payment Service Provider that the merchant is required to provide to be granted Apple’s permission to use the API.
If Apple opened it up to non-Merchants (who don’t come with their own PSP), then Apple would have to act as the PSP which is a much larger headache that they don’t want to deal with.
When you pay a merchant, the merchant pays processing fees, which in addition to running the service, help cover fraud and the rewards you earn with credit cards. If someone isn’t a merchant, you don’t want to actually pay them.
I would find it pretty handy if e-transfers were possible this way.
Just speculation but perhaps it would be easy for credit card criminals to steal money quickly? Steal a card. Tap to pay. Use the funds to buy Amazon gift card or whatever. Ditch the apple account. Rinse and repeat.
You still need faceid to activate tap to pay. I’m not sure how activating user to user to user tap would make things any different.
some small amounts may be paid before unlocking (at least on android)
Asia we have national qr payments that work for everyone, including p2p and b2c.
Money laundering
