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On August 9, 2021, Apple Pay became available to Adobe Commerce merchants through PayPal's Smart Button. Apple Pay had been limited to Safari and native iOS apps. It can now be offered at web checkout, backed by Touch ID and Face ID, without a bespoke integration or a wider PCI scope.
Why Apple Pay converts
Apple Pay is about as short as checkout gets. The customer authenticates with a biometric or a device PIN and pays in a single tap. No form fields, no card number typed in on a phone. Friction at checkout is where mobile baskets go to die, and this removes most of it.
The merchant side is better still. Apple Pay transactions are tokenised, so card data never touches your infrastructure. Apple handles tokenisation and transmission to the payment network, which keeps that burden with Apple and the customer's bank. If you already take PayPal, adding Apple Pay through the Smart Button adds no PCI compliance work.
How the integration works
The PayPal Smart Button is a browser component that detects which payment methods the customer's device supports and shows only those. On iPhone or iPad in Safari it offers Apple Pay. On Android, Google Pay. On desktop it falls back to PayPal or card.
Your side of it:
Drop the Smart Button onto the checkout page.
PayPal handles method detection and rendering.
Apple Pay payments are processed through PayPal's APIs.
The order lands in Adobe Commerce with a successful payment status.
PayPal has abstracted away Apple Pay's native integration, so supporting it needs no specialist iOS knowledge and no certificate management.
What the customer sees
Select Apple Pay, authenticate with Touch ID or Face ID, and the order confirms without card details ever appearing on screen. It works on:
iPhone and iPad (iOS 13+)
Mac, with Apple Pay set up and Touch ID
Apple Watch, though rarely for eCommerce
Most Apple users already pay this way in shops and apps. You are borrowing a habit rather than teaching one.
Running it day to day
Reconciliation. Apple Pay orders settle through PayPal like everything else, so PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay and card payments all arrive in one feed.
Refunds and disputes. Handled exactly as PayPal transactions. No special process.
Fraud and chargebacks. The biometric requirement is a strong fraud signal, because the device owner has to authenticate. Unauthorised transactions, and the chargebacks that follow them, are correspondingly rarer.
Practical considerations
Browser support. Apple Pay on the web needs Safari on macOS or iOS. Other browsers on those devices will not offer it. That is Apple's design rather than a gap in the integration, so test that the Smart Button degrades cleanly everywhere else.
Certificates and domains. Unlike Apple Pay in a native app, the web version needs no certificate pinning. PayPal handles domain validation and merchant authentication server-side.
Layout. The Smart Button adapts to the viewport, and on mobile it typically takes the full width of the checkout area. Check your checkout has room for it.
What this means for you
By August 2021 digital wallets were taking a growing share of online transactions in the US and Europe, and Apple Pay was a meaningful part of that. Supporting it used to be a project. Through the Smart Button it is a checkout change. If you already run PayPal there is no rework: add the button, test it on real devices, then read your mobile conversion rate a month later.