Stripe Launches Tap to Pay for Android Devices in Six Countries

Stripe Inc. late Wednesday announced it is making Tap to Pay functionality for Android phones and tablets available in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Singapore. The San Francisco-based processor launched Tap to Pay for iPhone last year.

The addition of Tap to Pay for Android will enable merchants using Android devices to add or expand in-person checkout by converting those devices into contactless mobile card readers.

Tap to Pay is a feature of Stripe Terminal, which includes a set of application programming interfaces and software development kits supporting in-person payments with developer interfaces, pre-certified card readers, cloud-based hardware management, and logistics management, enabling merchants to unify their online and offline checkouts. 

Stripe bills Tap to Pay as making the full power of its Stripe Terminal technology available to more businesses by reducing the overhead of dedicated payment hardware. That in turn lets merchants build and customize in-person checkouts that can leverage Stripe’s scale and integration with the rest of the Stripe product suite, which includes online payments and revenue and financial management, without the need for traditional point-of-sale hardware, David Yang, product manager for Stripe Terminal, says by email.

“It also reduces [merchants’] ongoing support costs, since in-person payments are fully integrated into Stripe’s online payments tools and revenue and financial-management tools,” Yang says. “For their customers, it means they can benefit from frictionless payment experiences in person and satisfy their growing preferences for contactless tap as a payment method.”

A recent Stripe survey found that 65% of businesses plan to make a unified in-person and online checkout experience a priority in 2023. Research from Wunderman Thompson Commerce, a Watford, England-based e-commerce consultancy, found that 64% of shoppers prefer brands with an online and in-store presence.

“Contactless payments are increasingly becoming the norm, therefore it’s crucial that businesses of all sizes are able to accept this form of payment,” Dong Min Kim, director of product management for Google Payments, says in a prepared statement. “Android devices already connect billions of people globally, and by teaming up with Stripe to support Tap to Pay, we are providing businesses who have Android devices an easy and cost-effective way to accept contactless payments from their customers.”

Two businesses using Tap to Pay for Android include FareHarbor, a provider of activity and booking software for tour operators, and Squire, a barbershop business-management platform. Squire adopted the application to make it easier for barbershops to accept in-person payments. Fareharbor implemented the solution to offer its users a mobile-friendly payment option. Faster checkouts have been an early benefit of Tap to Pay, according to Fareharbor.

“Tap to Pay on Android is an exciting innovation that will give our clients more flexibility to accept in-person payments anywhere,” Dominique Oosthuizen, product manager at FareHarbor, says in a prepared statement.