Apple Expands In-Store Tap to Pay With iPhone 16 as 2022 Checkout Shift Deepens

Q: With iOS 27's 'Tap to Share' feature, how will Apple protect your personal data from merchants during checkout?

Apple’s likely safeguard is to keep “Tap to Share” under explicit user control and separate it from your actual payment credentials, so merchants receive only the information you choose to send. Based on Apple’s description of the feature, “Tap to Share” is meant to let shoppers pass along items such as an email address, shipping details or loyalty information with a tap. The key protection is consent: the customer decides what is shared, rather than the merchant automatically pulling personal data during checkout. Apple has also said shared data is visible only to the customer and the merchant’s supported app, indicating a direct device-to-device transfer rather than broad distribution. For the payment itself, Apple’s existing Apple Pay architecture adds another privacy layer. Merchants do not get your real card number. Instead, Apple Pay uses tokenization, sending a device-specific payment token and a one-time dynamic security code. Those credentials are stored in the iPhone’s Secure Element, and transactions are typically authorized with Face ID, Touch ID or a passcode. That means “Tap to Share” should not expose more than the personal details you actively approve, while the payment side remains protected by Apple Pay’s established system. What Apple has not yet fully detailed is exactly how granular those sharing controls will be in practice, or what retention limits participating merchants must follow once they receive customer-approved data.

3 articles · Updated · iClarified · Jul 12

More Apple retail employees will get iPhone 16 units to process in-store purchases through Tap to Pay on iPhone, widening checkout without separate payment hardware.
iPhone 14-based setups could be finicky and sometimes failed with metal cards such as AmEx Platinum and Chase Sapphire Reserve, while Apple found the iPhone 16 handled payments better.
The move extends a transition Apple began in 2022, when it launched Tap to Pay on iPhone for merchants and started replacing Bluetooth card readers in its own stores.
iOS 27 is set to add a new Tap to Share feature, showing Apple is still building out NFC-based in-person interactions beyond payments.