Tap to Pay for sole traders.

What Tap to Pay actually is

Modern smartphones already contain the contactless hardware that a card terminal uses. Tap to Pay is the software layer that lets a business app use it to accept a payment rather than only to make one.

From the customer's side nothing unusual happens: they tap their card, phone or watch, and it works the way a contactless payment always does. The difference is on your side — there's no second device.

How it differs from an EFTPOS terminal

In Australia, "EFTPOS machine" is what most people call the thing on the counter. The practical differences are:

• Hardware. A terminal is a device to buy or rent, keep charged, carry and eventually replace. Tap to Pay uses the phone in your pocket.
• Setup. A terminal usually involves a merchant facility and a delivery wait. Phone-based acceptance is set up in software.
• Portability. This is the real one for mobile businesses. There is nothing to forget in the other vehicle.
• Payment types. A terminal may handle situations phone-based acceptance does not — the specifics depend on your provider, so check before you rely on it for a particular setup.

Where it earns its keep

The value isn't really "accepting cards". It's closing the gap between finishing work and being paid for it.

For a sole trader, that gap is where most cashflow pain lives. You finish a job on Tuesday, write the invoice on Thursday evening, and the customer pays it a fortnight later — or doesn't, and now you're sending a follow-up you'd rather not send. Every step in that chain is a place for the payment to slow down.

Taking payment while you're standing there removes the entire chain.

It suits you if:

• you're physically with the customer when the work is finished;
• your customers are individuals or small businesses rather than large accounts;
• you currently wait on transfers, or chase them;
• you work across multiple sites and don't want more gear.

It suits you less if:

• you invoice remotely and never meet the customer;
• you bill larger businesses that pay on account through their own process;
• you need a fixed counter setup with a receipt printer.

The fees question

"No hardware cost" is not "no cost". Card acceptance carries processing fees whichever way you do it, usually a percentage of each transaction and sometimes a fixed amount per transaction on top.

When comparing options, look at:

• the processing rate, and whether it differs by card type;
• any fixed per-transaction amount;
• whether there's a monthly fee, and whether it applies when you don't trade;
• how quickly funds settle into your account.

For a business doing a modest number of larger jobs, a percentage rate matters more than hardware cost. For high-volume small transactions, the fixed per-transaction amount can matter more than the percentage.

In ZappInvoice, card payment processing is handled through Stripe, so Stripe's processing fees apply to card transactions in addition to your plan. See pricing.

Why it belongs with your invoicing

Here's the part that often gets missed. Most phone-payment products come from payments companies, and most invoicing products come from accounting companies. Use one of each and you have two records of the same job that you reconcile yourself.

When the invoice and the payment live in the same app, taking the payment settles the invoice — no matching a payout in one dashboard against an invoice in another, and no wondering later which of the two is right.

That's the reason Tap to Pay in ZappInvoice sits inside the invoicing workflow rather than beside it. It's also why the last step — capturing what the job cost you — is in the same place.

Getting started sensibly

1. Work out whether you're actually with customers at the point of payment.
2. Check the current device and provider requirements.
3. Compare processing fees on your real transaction sizes, not on an average.
4. Test it on a small job before relying on it for a big one.
5. Make sure the payment records against the invoice, so your books don't need manual matching.