Apple closes in on SoftPOS market by allowing iPhones to be POS

Apple is rumoured to be launching a new SoftPOS service that will let small businesses accept payments directly on their iPhones without any extra hardware.

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 card.

The system will likely use the iPhone’s NFC chip that is currently used for Apple Pay.

Mobeewave’s technology only needs an app and the phone’s NFC to work, unlike services like Square that requires the use of external hardware.

The user simply has to type in the amount they want to charge, and their customer only needs to tap their credit card onto the back of the device.

Proven Technology

Mobeewave previously worked with Samsung on similar NFC functionality, trialling a system called Samsung POS in the startup’s home country of Canada in 2019 before launching it worldwide.#

Samsung POS enabled Samsung phones to accept payments directly from contactless cards and NFC payment services like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay.

“One of the biggest challenges to the widespread adoption of software point of sale (SoftPOS), is that up until now, it was not supported by iOS operating systems,” notes Brad Hyett, CEO of Phos.

“With Apple entering the SoftPOS space, this validates the technology and will put further pressure on the traditional POS manufacturers who have failed to successfully address the SME market.

Expectations of what a business will look like in the future have changed fundamentally. With the rise of covidpreneurs over the last 18 months, there’s been a global surge in sole traders who are choosing more fulfilling employment over a steady paycheck.

This shift in the makeup of the global economy is driving the rise of an ‘application marketplace’, whereby business functions are increasingly moving onto the mobile devices of business owners.

That is, these new market entrepreneurs are increasingly running their business out of a tablet or mobile device, rather than traditional PCs and other legacy systems.”