Apple to Rival Square by Turning iPhones Into Payment Terminals
- Devices currently require external terminals such as Square’s
- Apple paid $100 million for Mobeewave in 2020 to build feature
This article is for subscribers only.
Apple Inc. is planning a new service that will let small businesses accept payments directly on their iPhones without any extra hardware, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The company has been working on the new feature since around 2020, when it paid about $100 million for a Canadian startup called Mobeewave that developed technology for smartphones to accept payments with the tap of a credit card. The system will likely use the iPhone’s near field communications, or NFC, chip that is currently used for Apple Pay.