Turn your merchants’ smartphone or tablet into a payment terminal

Think about the last time you paid a plumber or landscaper. Odds are you didn't tap a card. You wrote a check, paid cash or received an invoice via email that you paid days later, if you remembered. 

The job is completed and the payment part should be easy, but why is it the part that slips out to the following week? 

For decades, the answer was hardware. Taking a card in person meant buying, shipping, setting up and configuring a credit card terminal. Keeping it connected to the internet, and then bringing the payment card to the terminal.

That’s a lot standing between a merchant and getting paid. So, merchants skipped it and instead, sent an invoice and waited. 

Not anymore. 

Card acceptance made easy with Tap to Phone 

Rainforest now supports Tap to Phone! With Tap to Phone, card acceptance is made easy and built directly into your mobile application, running on smartphones or tablets your merchants already carry every day.¹  

Your merchants’ customer simply taps their card or NFC-enabled smartphone or watch to the back of the merchants’ smartphone or tablet, waits for an authorization… and that’s it. 

No terminal to order. No cables or walking laps around the office looking for a signal.

Get more modernization, with control 

Your workflow, your brand 

Don’t get stuck with whatever a terminal manufacturer gives you. Tap to Phone is yours to build on. Your workflow, your checkout experience, and your branding. 

It looks and feels like your product, because it is your product. It’s embedded directly into your mobile app.

Stop paying the terminal tax

A terminal isn't just a device cost. It's the shipping, the setup, the support ticket when it won't connect, and the warranty swap when it dies. 

Worst of all, it's the merchant who signs up, gets excited and then never actually accepts a payment, because step one was "wait for a box." 

A phone skips all of it because merchants already have one in their pocket. 

Once you get the terminal set up, it’s a locked gray box that maybe lets you put your logo on the splash screen. And your merchants are chained to that terminal. They can’t take card payments anywhere else.

With Tap to Phone, you control the payment experience and your merchants can get paid pretty much wherever their customer is.² 

Boost economics for your platform 

Card-present rates 

Here’s the part that matters for your bottom line: a card tapped to a phone is a card-present transaction. Card-not-present transactions such as an emailed payment link or a keyed-in number costs more to process and poses an increased  fraud risk. 

Same customer, same card, better economics. All because the card was actually there.

Win more volume you’re losing to checks 

When card payments aren’t easy, people fall back to cash and checks. And the payment circumvents your platform entirely. Every check a merchant deposits at the bank is volume you never see and never earn on. 

Give your merchants a way to accept card payments on the spot, and that offline volume can finally move to your platform.

Your merchants get paid on the spot 

Card payments are everywhere. 

• The HVAC tech who gets paid in the driveway before the truck door shuts.
• The medspa that checks a client out right in the treatment room, tip and all, on a screen that matches their brand.
• The youth-sports coach who collects tournament fees from the sidelines.
• The animal rescue volunteer who accepts donations and adoption fees at an event.
• The self-storage manager who gets a new lease signed and takes payment at the unit instead of hiking back to the office.

The list goes on. Anywhere your merchants can get an email is now somewhere they can get paid.

This is the difference between “invoice sent” and "payment received”. No chasing. No awkward follow-up calls. No writing off the balances that never got paid. The payment is collected before your merchant moves on to their next appointment.

Give your merchants the freedom to get paid 

With Rainforest, Tap to Phone runs on the same API as every other payment method. No second integration to maintain. No separate report to reconcile.

Every payment, across every method – Tap to Phone, card not present, PayPal, digital wallets, and ACH – all show in a unified report with the metadata your platform defines so you can easily match it to the customer, job, or invoice it belongs to. And your merchants get a single daily deposit with penny-perfect reconciliation. 

It’s time your platform earns more, while your merchants get paid on the spot instead of chasing invoices for weeks. 

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¹ Device requirements apply. See limitations for Mobile Pay and Tap to Phone SDKs.

² Merchants will need an internet connection via Wi-Fi or cellular service. Geography restrictions may apply. See limitations for Mobile Pay and Tap to Phone SDKs.

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