Apple preparing to turn iPhones into card payment terminals

The growing number of Apple Pay supporting outlets won’t even fit the page

Apple has a small plan for small business and aims to make it possible to accept card payments using your iPhone without an additional card reader, a report claims.

Small business will cheer this news

It isn’t clear if Apple plans to do this itself as an adjunct to Apple Pay, or if it instead intends to create frameworks third parties such as Square or others may use to make payments possible to iPhone without a dongle or additional terminal.

What is clear is that making this process easier should benefit many businesses in many situations.

I imagine Apple will want to introduce the feature as part of Apple Pay, but also think it likely it will open things up to others given it already faces enough pressure to run an open market on its platforms. We shall see.

The report, published by Bloomberg, says the plan may be on the fast track and could appear with iOS 15.4.

It also reminds us that Apple acquired Mobeewave in 2020, which was building a tech to turn phones into payment portals. So, Apple has been thinking about this for some time. (Mobeewave originally worked with Samsung on a phone-based POS service).

[Also read: When will Apple Pay do something like this?]

Tap and go, basically

The move would make use of the iPhone’s NFC radio and an app – you would not require an external payment device, such as those from Square. Users would tap the charge, buyers would tap the phone with their card and the money rolls between parties in the deal.

Your iPhone became your wallet, now it’s more

Apple continues to work to expand its Apple Pay network. The company recently increased its office spaces in Europe for the service and continues to launch in new nations, with launch in Chile coming and Armenia just last week. Argentina and Peru are also on the “soon to launch” list.

The company is also thought to be considering introduction of some form of ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ service, but little is known of this at this time.

In terms of proliferation, Apple Pay is now supported by over 9,000 banks and over 60 nations and regions, the company said last year. As of summer 2021, Loup Ventures estimates around half a billion people now use Apple Pay. Juniper Research thinks transactions using the service will hit $686 billion by 2024.

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