Because as it’s currently designed Apple is not handling any of the actual transactions- those are handled by the Payment Service Provider that the merchant is required to provide to be granted Apple’s permission to use the API.

If Apple opened it up to non-Merchants (who don’t come with their own PSP), then Apple would have to act as the PSP which is a much larger headache that they don’t want to deal with.

When you pay a merchant, the merchant pays processing fees, which in addition to running the service, help cover fraud and the rewards you earn with credit cards. If someone isn’t a merchant, you don’t want to actually pay them.

Asia we have national qr payments that work for everyone, including p2p and b2c.

Just speculation but perhaps it would be easy for credit card criminals to steal money quickly? Steal a card. Tap to pay. Use the funds to buy Amazon gift card or whatever. Ditch the apple account. Rinse and repeat.

Apple doesn’t process the transaction, a different payment processor does, Apple just provides the API for developers from said payment processors to implement in their app.

The current closest thing for tap to pay for consumer to consumer payments is NameDrop then using Apple Pay Cash through iMessage however this is a less seamless method and is only available in the US. I can however see Apple expanding the tap to airdrop features to Apple Pay Cash in the future, perhaps with iOS 18.