GoDaddy and Apple Team Up to Help Small Businesses Accept Payments

Web hosting company GoDaddy is getting in on the contactless payment game with a new feature that allows small businesses to accept payments using iPhones. 

GoDaddy partnered with Apple to make this happen, leveraging the latter’s tap-to-pay technology on iPhones. In other words, you need a compatible iPhone model to set this up or even make a payment as a customer. However, in a world where many small business owners are forced to use cumbersome hardware to accept payments, this may be seen as a convenience. 

GoDaddy says the payment process has been completely streamlined, saying that business owners could download the app, sign up, and get started in "just a couple minutes.” The company adds that businesses can now accept "all types of contactless in-person payments.” 

To that end, businesses using this technology can accept debit payments, credit card payments, Apple Pay, and many other digital wallets. This feature is built on top of Apple’s proprietary Tap to Pay format, so data privacy is an important tentpole of the design, both for the consumer and the business owner. The tools do not store card numbers on the device or on any servers, and GoDaddy uses advanced encryption to further safeguard data. 

There is a transaction fee for the business owner, but it is on the lower side, at 2.3 percent, especially when compared to card-processing fees. For example, Square, a commonly used payment service for small businesses, charges 2.6 percent plus $0.10 per transaction for in-person transactions or 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per transaction for online sales.

The GoDaddy feature launches today but only for businesses in the US.