Last week, our team discovered code in the iOS 27 release candidate that revealed there would be a new NFC-based way to redeem Apple gift cards by tapping them on the back of a compatible iPhone, and now a demo of the feature has surfaced.
While the feature doesn’t appear to be available yet, Karta co-founder David Anderson found a workaround for the new gift card interface to appear on iOS 27 and shared a video in action on his LinkedIn page today.
Apple’s new gift cards will have small print at the bottom of the card that says “hold iPhone here to redeem” and then a redemption flow will automatically appear on iOS 27. You can then check the card’s balance and redeem it. Alternatively, the fine print indicates that customers can still visit apple.com/redeem for a manual swap.
Specifically, customers will be asked to hold the top and back of their iPhone near the bottom of the Apple Gift Card to initiate the redemption via NFC.
The NFC-based exchange will apparently help combat Apple gift card scams, but we don’t have all the details yet. During the redemption process, Apple will verify that the card is genuine and unspent, in accordance with iOS 27. For security reasons, the interface may display “this card has been blocked” or “cancelled” if necessary.
iOS 27 is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and later, all of which support NFC, so this new method of redeeming Apple gift cards should be widely available. However, this feature has not yet been announced by Apple and we do not know when it will be launched.
