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by jasonbarone 4296 days ago
How are they deciding who can accept Apple Pay in stores? For instance, how do mom and pop shops who use Square readers get on board with Apple Pay?

Is it safe to assume that in the future, an iPhone itself can be a device that ACCEPTS payments too?

3 comments

They did not announce a POS (point of sale), but I imagine if this takes off there will be more innovation in the NFC POS space.

They're just using existing NFC POS that currently take Google Wallet, there's nothing special about the fact that it takes Apple Pay.

Jack Dorsey just posted on twitter that square will support Apple Pay. https://twitter.com/jack/status/509413534862544896
How will they actually accept the payment though? Apple Pay requires Touch ID (or Apple Watch), which is the consumer's device.

Does that mean there will be an API for 3rd party developers to ACCEPT Apple Pay over the air? Or do they have to build a special Card Reader? Or would they have to bring back an Apple Pay supported Square Wallet app?

I believe apple pay is just using same nfc infrastructure already in place for a while. The same infrastructure google wallet and others are targeting.
All POS systems that support NFC payments (which is most of the new ones I believe) support Apple pay by default.
I imagine they would have to have a new device for chip/pin chip/signature anyway. My guess is they are just adding NFC to the new device while they are at it.
i asked your last question earlier (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8291637) and got downvoted (whatever that means).

i know that nfc can support two-way communication so was wondering if anyone knows offhand if apple's api exposes this option. if so, it should be possible to also accept payment using apple pay (hopefully new ipads get nfc in the next revision to support this).