Apple Tap to Pay expected to turn Saudi merchants’ iPhones into payment terminals

Saudi Arabia is preparing to bring Apple’s Tap to Pay on iPhone to market, allowing a merchant’s compatible iPhone to act as the card terminal rather than merely as a customer’s digital wallet. A shopper will be able to tap a mada card, another contactless card, or a digital wallet against the merchant’s phone; the merchant will use a payment app, so no separate card reader is needed. The change could make accepting electronic payments simpler for small and mobile businesses, but it is not live yet: the Saudi Central Bank has said only that it is coming soon and has not named a launch date or the first banks and payment providers.