Tap to Pay on iPhone

What it is

Tap to Pay on iPhone turns your iPhone into the card machine. There is no reader to buy, no dongle, no cable. You enter what the customer owes, turn the phone towards them, and they hold their contactless card — or their own iPhone or watch — flat against the top of your phone until a tick appears.

It only runs inside the Joby app on an iPhone. On a computer the settings page still opens, but it tells you plainly: "Open the Joby app on your iPhone to set up and use Tap to Pay on iPhone. This page is for reference on the web." On an Android phone the payment screen says "Tap to Pay is currently available on iPhone only."

There are only two screens you need to know:

A tapped payment is a normal payment. It shows up on the Payments page, on the invoice it paid, and in your usual payouts — exactly like a card a customer entered online.

When to use it

• You are standing in front of the customer and want the money before you leave.
• The job is finished and there is a balance left on it.
• You are collecting a deposit on an estimate the customer just agreed to.
• Someone walks in and pays for a part or a small service — no client record needed.
• A customer's online payment failed and they would rather just tap their card.

Use something else when the customer is not with you. Send them the estimate or invoice link and let them pay online instead — see Estimates and Payments. And if the customer paid you in cash or by cheque, record that by hand on the Payments Received card instead of tapping anything.

Before you start

The settings page lists most of this for you under a What you need card. Here it is in full.

• Tap to Pay has to be switched on for your company. If it is not, the settings page says "Tap to Pay on iPhone isn't enabled for this organization yet. Contact Joby support to turn it on." and the Collect buttons never appear anywhere.
• You need the Joby app on an iPhone XS or later, running a recent version of iOS. Not a computer, not an Android phone, not the mobile web browser.
• The iPhone needs a passcode set and must be signed in to iCloud.
• Your company must already be taking card payments. Card payments are switched on from the Payments page. Tap to Pay runs on Stripe — if your company is set to take card payments through Square instead, you get a message asking you to switch the active payment processor to Stripe first.
• Your company address must be filled in. The very first setup needs it, and without it you get "Tap to Pay needs your company address. Add it in Settings → Company Settings, then try again." Fill it in under Settings›Business›Company Settings.
• An owner or admin has to do the first setup on each phone. Apple's Terms and Conditions can only be accepted by an owner or an administrator. Everyone else sees "Only an administrator can accept the Tap to Pay on iPhone Terms and Conditions for your business." Once an admin has set that phone up, anybody allowed to collect can take payments on it.
• You need an internet connection at the moment you take the payment.Offline, you get "No internet connection. Tap to Pay on iPhone needs to be online to take a payment."
• The Collect button follows the page it sits on. Your role needs Payments for the Payments page, Invoices for an invoice, Estimates for an estimate and Leads for a job. Roles are set under Settings›People›Team Roles — see Team Roles & Permissions.

Step-by-step

Set the phone up (owner or admin, once per phone)

1. Open the Joby app on the iPhone that will be taking payments.
2. Tap Settings in the bar along the bottom of the screen, then, under the Settings heading, tap Tap to Pay on iPhone. (On a computer the same page is at Settings›Quotes & Docs›Tap to Pay on iPhone, but it is reference only.)
3. Tap the blue Set up Tap to Pay on iPhone button.
4. Apple shows its Terms and Conditions. Read them and accept. This is the step only an owner or admin can do.
5. The phone then sets itself up. You will see "Setting up Tap to Pay on iPhone on this iPhone…" with a progress bar and the warning "You can't take a payment until setup finishes. The first setup can take a minute or two." Leave the app open and let it finish.
6. A short walkthrough of how to tap appears the first time. Read it through — you can reopen it any time with the How Tap to Pay on iPhone works button on the same page.
7. When it is done you get a Tap to Pay on iPhone is ready message and a green Ready badge in the corner of the card.

On an eligible iPhone you may also be greeted by a full-screen announcement — "Now you can accept payments on your iPhone" — a moment after the app opens. Set up Tap to Pay on iPhone there does exactly the same thing. Not now dismisses it, and it only ever appears once per phone. If you are not an admin, that announcement offers a Got it button instead and asks you to speak to an administrator.

Take a payment

1. Open the record you are collecting against and press Collect (see the next section for where each button is).
2. Check the amount at the top of the Collect Payment window, and fill in anything the window is asking for.
3. Press the big button at the bottom. It reads Tap to Pay on iPhone followed by the amount, for example Tap to Pay on iPhone · $240.00.
4. Turn the phone towards the customer. The screen shows the amount and "Ask the customer to hold their contactless card or device flat against the top of this iPhone."
5. The customer holds their card, phone or watch flat against the top of your iPhone and keeps it there until you both see the tick. If their card asks for a PIN, a keypad appears on your screen — hand the phone over and let them type it themselves.
6. You get a green tick, the amount, and the words Payment collected.
7. Offer a receipt (Email or Text), then press Done.

If you need to back out before the customer taps, press Cancel on the tap screen. The window will not let you close it in the middle of a charge — that is deliberate.

Where the Collect button is

Quick Collect: charging an amount that has no invoice yet

Starting from the Payments page, the window asks you three things.

1. Who is paying. Press Existing client and search by name or phone, then tap a name in the results to attach it. Press New client to type First name, Last name, Phone (optional) and Email (optional). Or press neither — the line "No client selected — the payment is recorded as a walk-in sale." tells you that is what will happen.
2. How much. Either type it into the big Amount box and add a note in "What's it for? (optional)", or press Price Book and pick the items you sold. Picked items appear as a list with a Total row; the bin icon removes a line and Add more items adds another. The minimum is $0.50.
3. Take the payment with the Tap to Pay on iPhone button.

A Quick Collect payment creates a small invoice for you automatically, so the money is filed the same way as every other payment rather than floating loose. If you started from a job, the invoice is attached to that job.

Send the customer a receipt

On the success screen you get Send the customer a receipt with two buttons — Email and Text — plus a share icon in the app for sending the link any other way.

1. Press Email or Text. If Joby already has the customer's email or phone number it is filled in for you.
2. Correct it if you need to, then press Send receipt.
3. You get a Receipt sent confirmation and Receipt sent to … appears with the address or number you used.

You can send the same receipt as many times as you need — the buttons stay put after a send, so you can correct a wrong address, text it as well as email it, or send it again if it never arrived. Re-opening the channel you just used fills in what you sent, ready to fix.

Receipts go out from your business's own number and email address, never from your personal phone or mailbox. Back returns to the two buttons if you picked the wrong one.

How to check it worked

• Setup finished: a green Ready badge sits at the top of the card on Settings›Tap to Pay on iPhone, and the green panel reads "This iPhone is ready to accept payments with Tap to Pay on iPhone. Open any invoice, estimate or job and choose Collect."
• The payment went through: a big green tick, the amount, and Payment collected.
• The receipt went out: a Receipt sent message, then Receipt sent to … on screen. If it never reached the customer, send it again from the same buttons.
• It landed in your records: the charge appears on the Payments page, and the invoice's Payments Received card shows a higher Total received and a smaller remaining figure.
• Quick Collect: a new invoice exists in the customer's name — or under Walk-in customer if you attached nobody — carrying the internal note "Created via Quick Collect (in-person payment)".
• Collected on a job: the job's balance drops by what you took, and paying the balance in full moves the job to done.

Common mistakes

• Amount too small. Anything under fifty cents is refused with "Enter an amount of at least $0.50."
• "Existing client" chosen but nobody picked. The window says "Tap a client in the search results to attach them — or switch to New client / walk-in." Searching is not the same as selecting — you have to tap the name.
• Setup interrupted. If the phone loses connection halfway you get "Setting up Tap to Pay on iPhone didn't finish. Check your connection and try again." Just press Set up Tap to Pay on iPhone again.
• Old iPhone or old iOS. You will see either "Update your iPhone to the latest version of iOS to accept payments with Tap to Pay on iPhone." or "This iPhone can't use Tap to Pay on iPhone. It requires iPhone XS or later running a recent version of iOS."
• Location turned off. "Location access is required to accept payments. Turn it on for Joby in iPhone Settings."
• Nothing left to collect. An invoice already settled gives "This invoice has already been paid"; an estimate gives "This estimate has already been fully paid" or "The deposit for this estimate has already been collected"; and if a bank payment is still clearing you get "A bank payment for this invoice is already processing — no need to collect again."
• Switched company or signed out and back in. The phone lets go of its connection on purpose when the active company changes. Press Collect and it reconnects — the first one after a switch can take a moment longer.
• Expecting Tap to Pay on the estimate customer portal. The portal is for the customer paying online themselves. Tap to Pay is only for a card in front of you.