Collect a card payment by tap on your phone

Let a customer tap their card or phone on your Android phone to pay an invoice through Nova Payments, including Interac debit in Canada, and know how tap receipts and refunds work.

This is done in Nova for Android, from the invoice. On the web, the invoice is under Sales & Billing, then Invoices, and shows the payment as soon as the tap goes through. The page address is /invoices/:uid.

Before you start

• Nova Payments has to be set up and live. See Set up Nova Payments.
• Your role needs permission to collect card payments in person by tapping a card on a phone.
• The phone needs contactless (NFC) turned on and has to allow Nova to use its location while taking a tap.
• The first time a phone in your company takes a tap, Nova registers your business as a place that takes cards, using the primary address under Addresses on your company's contact points page (see Add your company's addresses, emails and phone numbers). Without a primary address it uses another complete address saved there, and without any it uses the business address you gave Stripe during setup. Add an address with the street, city, province or state, postal code and country before the first tap.
• A card payment has to be at least $0.50.

Steps

1. Open the invoice in Nova for Android and press Collect payment.
2. Choose Tap card on this phone.
3. If the phone asks, press Allow location.
4. When the screen reads Hold the card to the back of the phone, the customer holds their card, phone or watch there until the screen reads Paid.
5. Press Done. The invoice shows the payment, and the receipt goes out the way receipts normally do (see Send payment receipts automatically and allow tips).

What you see

• In Canada, the customer can tap a debit card (Interac) as well as a credit card. There is nothing to choose; the card decides.
• A tap receipt shows the card's last four digits, the application name, the AID, the authorization code and how the card was read, which the card networks require on an in-person receipt. An Interac receipt also shows the account type.
• A card taken by tap is never kept on file for the customer.

Refunds

• A credit card tap is refunded like any other card payment. See Refund a payment.
• An Interac debit tap can only be refunded in person, with the customer's card at the phone, by the debit network's rule. Nova can't take an in-person refund yet, so if you try to refund an Interac tap, Nova says so and nothing is sent. Pay the customer back another way, such as cash or e-transfer, and record it against the invoice, as Refund a payment describes for a failed refund.

If something looks different

• The phone says card taps need a payment location set up in Nova Payments: Nova found no complete address for your business. Add one under Addresses on the contact points page, then try the tap again.
• Card declined: press Try another card, or Take a different way to type the card in, send a link to pay or record cash.
• Almost there with a Finish payment button: the card went through but the phone lost its connection before Nova could finish. Press Finish payment, and never take the card a second time. Finish later leaves it for now: the invoice in Nova for Android keeps a notice with its own Finish payment button, and if nobody finishes it, Nova finishes it by itself within about 15 minutes.
• This phone can't take card taps: the phone has no contactless reader or is too old for it. Go back and choose Type in a card or Send a link to pay instead.

Open Invoices