Set Up Apple Cash without Dedicated iPhone

TidBITS Talk
1

My high school class is having a reunion and I’d like to accept payments for it with Apple Pay (in addition to PayPal). I’ve already set up an Apple ID (separate from my own or any other person) and attached payment methods to it.

How can I enable Apple Cash for this class Apple ID? No, the class’ Apple ID does not have it’s own iPhone.

Just to be clear, the goals are:

  • Accept cash transfers without paying a fee; and
  • Avoid commingling personal and reunion funds.

Thank you.

2

I tried setting up Apple Pay via a Compatible Device, an M2 MacBook Air (with Touch ID) running Ventura macOS 13 using  → System Settings → Wallet & Apple Pay while logged into the class’ Apple ID.

It all seemed to work until I tried to send Apple Cash to it via the Wallet app on my iPhone. Then I got the error message:

Invalid Recipient
[Recipient Name] cannot receive
payments sent with Apple Cash as this time.

Yes, I get the same error if I try to send Apple Cash from my iPhone via Messages.

Apparently I’m not the first person to get this error and I’ll have to work though the suggested solutions carefully tomorrow.