Buying a food truck taco with your phone?
With direct iPhone-to-iPhone payments using the same NFC chips that enable Apple Pay.
Imagine shopping at a flea market and being able to pay by card.
Clay Banks / Unsplash
In theory, anyone with an iPhone might accept credit card payments, from food trucks tohomeless magazine vendors.
But unlike the now almost-universal Apple Pay, this new scheme already has some competition.
“Apple Pay isn’t the only game in town,” Japan-based attorneyMatthew Cartertold Lifewire via email.
Square
The Next Apple Pay
Apple Pay revolutionized phone payments.
It wasnt the first phone payment option, but it was the first to go fully mainstream.
Even if your iPhone is stolen, the thief still needs your phones passcode to make a payment.
Now, Apple may bring the same ease of use to receiving payments.
There are no details of this unannounced service, but one can imagine it would work withApple Cash.
Square Killer?
Apple’s payments system wouldn’t necessarily compete with this.
Square
That doesn’t sound like a typical Apple model.
More likely is it’s a simple offer for small businesses and individuals.
And in fact, Apple’s presence in this market might even help the likes of Square.
But, of course, that requires a lot more work from a user to get set up.
“Apple Pay isn’t the only game in town.”
And that could really shake up the rest of the industry.
Contactless payments with phones, cards, or watches are already huge in places like the U.K. and Sweden.
Its a small hop from there to eliminating cash altogether, at least in general everyday use.
This could be a pretty big deal.
