Apple is working on a new feature that will allow businesses to accept payments on their iPhones without extra hardware, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing sources.
Small businesses, like cafes or flower shops, that don’t use traditional payment terminals but use their Apple smartphones as such, currently require external hardware to accept payments, such as Square’s.
This may no longer be the case. Apple has reportedly been working on a new feature that would let its smartphones accept payments with the tap of a credit card since around 2020, when the company acquired a Canadian startup called Mobeewave.
The startup made headlines when it worked with Samsung on a similar feature, called Samsung POS. The system launched worldwide in 2019, allowing Samsung smartphones to accept payments directly from physical cards, digital wallets, and even smartwatches.
Like Samsung POS, Apple’s new feature is likely to use existing technology – the near field communications (NFC) chip, which enables digital wallets like Apple Pay.
If this is the case, the new service will be made available via a mere software update on all iPhone models that have the chip (iPhone 6 and all newer versions).
Bloomberg sources say the feature is coming in a matter of months, perhaps even with the next iOS 15.4 update.
However, there is no information on whether Apple will use its own payment network to service the system or partner with an outside provider.
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