MILAN (Reuters) - Payments companies Nexi, Stripe and Adyen have started offering businesses in Italy a way to accept payments from customers that relies on Apple's ( AAPL ) iPhones, they said on Wednesday.

Apple's ( AAPL ) Tap to Pay service uses a wireless technology known as near-field communication (NFC) which allows the exchange of data between devices over a short distance.

Nexi, Europe's biggest payments group by volume of transactions processed, already offered shopowners the chance to use their phone to process payments using the NexiSoftPOS application.

Until now, however, that could be used only on phones running on an Android operating system and not Apple's ( AAPL ) iOs.

Using a smartphone to process payments is particularly useful for small shops, which can in this way avoid having to pay for a specific piece of hardware.

Dutch group Adyen, which mostly provides e-commerce services to large corporate clients but has been widening its offer to include bricks-and-mortar stores, also said it was launching the Tap to Pay service. Milanese luxury brand Prada would offer it in its shops starting with Italy's fashion capital.

Stripe, which competes with Adyen to supply payments services to companies, said it was adopting the Apple ( AAPL ) service.

"Tap to Pay on iPhone means Italian companies can now accept contactless payments with a device a lot of us already carry in our pockets," said Ruhi Dang, Stripe's product manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa.