Is my money safe with a fintech?

It’s a fair question — and you should ask it of anyone who handles your money, us included. “Fintech” just means a financial company that leads with software instead of branches. The app is new; the rules behind card payments are not. Here’s how it works at Tapp, in plain English.

Who actually handles the payment

Tapp doesn’t process cards itself. Card payments run on Adyen, a licensed, PCI DSS compliant payment platform used by some of the world’s largest retailers. When a customer taps, Adyen’s Tap to Pay software reads the card; when a guest pays online, they pay on Adyen’s payment page. Full card numbers never reach Tapp.

Where your money goes

Before a shop can take payments, its owner verifies the business on Adyen’s secure verification page. From then on, Adyen pays your takings into the business bank account you verified — weekly or monthly, as you choose — and every payout is listed in the app with its date and status.

What “safe” is made of

• Card data stays with Adyen, a PCI DSS compliant payment platform
• Every business is verified before it takes a payment
• Every connection to Tapp is encrypted, and passwords are stored as one-way hashes
• Tapp’s servers run on Amazon Web Services in London
• Only the owner can change which payment methods the shop accepts

Being honest about the limits

No one should promise that nothing can ever go wrong. What a serious provider can do is keep card data with a specialist, verify every business, pay out to an account you control and tell you plainly how it all works. Your part is a strong password you don’t use anywhere else and a screen lock on the phone you sell from.