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Add Sephora, a beauty retailer, to the list of merchants adopting iPhones as payment-acceptance devices in the Tap to Pay on iPhone program. J.P. Morgan Payments says Sephora is its first such retailer to adopt the contactless-payment service, which does not require special hardware to complete a transaction.
Announced Tuesday, the service will be available in Sephora’s more than 600 freestanding U.S. stores. There are no caps placed by the card brands on contactless transaction amounts. Sephora, which has U.S. headquarters in San Francisco but is owned by Paris-based LVMH Group, is among the first LVMH U.S. retailers to adopt the Apple Inc. technology. Apple announced Tap to Pay on iPhone in 2022.
“Tap to Pay on iPhone allows our Beauty Advisors to complete contactless transactions easily with only an iPhone—anywhere in the store,” Stefan Jensen, Sephora vice president and treasurer, says in a statement. “Our customers get a transparent and secure transaction without waiting in a long queue, and our beauty advisors have more freedom to build meaningful connections with our shoppers.”
Tap to Pay on iPhone can accept any contactless credit or debit card as well as Apple Pay and other digital wallets used with an NFC-enabled mobile device.
Unlike early mobile point-of-sale services that use mobile phones, Tap to Pay on iPhone’s self-contained acceptance capability means no Bluetooth device needs to be connected and credit card information does not have to be manually entered, Max Neukirchen, J.P. Morgan Payments’ global head of payments and commerce solutions, says in a statement.
The payments processor, one of the largest in the country, expects more of its U.S. merchants to adopt the technology over the next year, including small-and medium-sized businesses.
