iPhones might soon be able to accept contactless payments

Mahmoud Itani

XDA Developers


iPhones might soon be able to accept contactless payments

Apple announced its Pay service back in 2014. The company since then has expanded its regional support, added more features to it, and even launched its own card. Through Apple Pay, users can make contactless payments through their iPhones and Apple Watches — thanks to the NFC chip. According to a new report, the Cupertino giant’s next big move in the payments field could be right around the corner. iPhones might soon be able to accept contactless payments without needing external hardware.

According to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, Apple is planning a new service that would allow small businesses to accept payments directly through their iPhones. The new addition could arrive through a software update and take advantage of the existing NFC chip included in iPhones. Samsung started supporting a similar feature back in 2019 — through Mobeewave’s payment acceptance technology. Apple acquired the mentioned Canadian startup for $100 million in 2020, and it has been reportedly working on the feature since then. If introduced, iPhone users would be capable of receiving payments with contactless bank cards and other NFC-enabled smartphones. This would make it significantly easier for small business owners to accept payments from customers. That’s because they wouldn’t be needing external devices, such as Square hardware.

It’s still unclear if Apple will be using its own payment network or partnering with an existing one. Additionally, there are no details regarding the regional availability of the rumored feature. Bloomberg only mentions that Apple may begin rolling it out in the coming months. We could potentially see traces of it when the company seeds the first beta build of the upcoming iOS 15.4. Yesterday Apple released iOS 15.3 to the public with critical bug fixes, so the next beta could land by next week or so.

Do you use Apple Pay? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments section below.

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