Apple will soon bring contactless payments to the iPhone
Apple plans to launch a new service that will allow small businesses to accept payments directly through iPhones without any additional hardware.
The company has been working on the new feature since around 2020, when it paid about $100 million to a Canadian startup called Mobeewave, which has developed technology that allows smartphones to accept one-click payments from a credit card.
The system will likely use the iPhone's built-in near-field communication chip, or NFC, which is currently used in Apple Pay.
To accept iPhone payments today, merchants must use payment terminals that connect to the phone or connect to it via Bluetooth.
The upcoming feature instead turns the iPhone into a payment terminal. This allows users to accept one-click payments from a credit card or another iPhone via the back of their device.
It's unclear whether the option to accept payment can be described as part of Apple Pay. The team working on the feature previously worked within the company's payments division since it was imported from Mobeewave.
It's also unclear whether Apple intends to partner with an existing payment network for the feature or launch it on its own.
The company could begin rolling out the feature via a software update in the coming months. The company is expected to release the first beta version of iOS 15.4 in the near future, which will likely see a final consumer release in early spring.
That would put the first impressions in close proximity to some of the other announcements. And Bloomberg reported that Apple plans to launch the iPhone SE and iPad Air with 5G network support as early as March or April, in addition to a new Mac device that runs on the company's custom processor.
Apple wants to turn iPhones into payment terminals
The company has been beefing up its payment capabilities in recent years, launching Apple Card in the U.S. in 2019. It introduced Apple Card payment plans for its devices later that year.
It also offers the Apple Cash card for peer-to-peer digital payments. It is working on a service for Apple Pay that allows people to buy things and pay for them in installments later.
The iPhone won't be the first device to have Mobeewave's payment acceptance technology. Samsung, which backed the startup before it was sold to Apple, is rolling out one-click credit card acceptance on its devices in 2019.
Mobeewave previously worked with Samsung. And tried a system called Samsung POS in Canada in 2019 before launching it worldwide.
Samsung POS enabled Samsung phones to accept payments directly from contactless cards and NFC payment services such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Google Pay.
