As the payment industry maintains its burgeoning outlook, big players in the tech space are exploring ways to win market shares by onboarding more payment services. Besides partnering with payment companies, many Silicon Valley big names have been creating custom payment systems that will potentially make them major competitors in the payment market.

To this end, Apple is planning a new service that will let small businesses accept payments directly on their iPhones without any extra hardware, Bloomberg reports, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

The iPhone maker has been running Apple Pay for purchases on iPhone, iPad and Mac. The new feature signals Apple’s intent to expand its payment ambition.

The report said that Apple 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 credit card.

Bloomberg noted that the system will likely use the iPhone’s near field communications, or NFC, chip that is currently used for Apple Pay. In order to accept payments on an iPhone today, merchants need to use payment terminals that plug in or communicate with the phone via Bluetooth, such as Block Inc.’s Square, which dominates the market.

The upcoming feature will instead turn the iPhone into a payment terminal, letting users such as food trucks and hair stylists accept payments with the tap of a credit card or another iPhone onto the back of their device, the report said.

Citing the people with the knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg said it’s unclear whether the payment acceptance option will be branded as part of Apple Pay, though the team working on the feature has been working within Apple’s payments division since being brought over from Mobeewave. It’s also not known if Apple intends to partner with an existing payment network for the feature or launch it alone.

Mobeewave’s payment acceptance technology started with Samsung, which invested in the startup before it was sold to Apple. Samsung implemented credit card acceptance with a tap on its devices using the startup’s payment technology in 2019.

Apple may begin rolling out the feature via a software update in the coming months, the people said. The company is expected to release the first beta version of iOS 15.4 in the near future, which is likely to see a final release for consumers as early as the spring. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

That would put the debut near a few other announcements; Apple plans to launch an iPhone SE and iPad Air with 5G as early as March or April, in addition to a new Mac running an Apple custom processor, Bloomberg News has reported.

Apple has been escalating its push in payments in recent years, launching the Apple Card in the U.S. in 2019 and rolling out Apple device installment plans on the credit card later that year. It also offers the Apple Cash card for digital peer-to-peer payments and is working on a service for Apple Pay that would let people buy things and pay them off later in installments, Bloomberg News reported last year.

I have been in business right from Oriendu Market in Ovim, Abia State, helping my grandmother on her garri and yam stores. In Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO), I ran a great business, publishing and editing my own campus magazine – FUTO Bubbles.

In NYSC, I did my first contract for the Nigerian government, winning and executing the structured office wiring project for NYSC Jos secretariat. I bought my first car (directly imported from Europe) from that  job as a NYSC member. In America, I worked as a grad student in the day, and in the night, I was a CEO of my African company.

You can see one thing: this is a business guy who really likes business. You know what? I share those experiences and more through Tekedia Institute Mini-MBA which begins Feb 7.

I invite you to go and register. It goes for N90,000 or $170 and runs for 12 weeks. It is the best knowledge investment you will make this quarter – I promise you. Come to my excursion and let’s visit the mechanics of markets.  Register here and let’s co-learn.

It is one of the most fascinating computer vision and machine learning projects in Lagos. Extremely brilliant young people building the operating system for digital commerce. They work night, they work day – and daily they are building a database of all and everything we come in contact with in life.

The destination: see it on video, click and buy. And get back to your video. You do not leave a frame but the item will be delivered to you in days. Patents already filed in the United States.

Manufacturers, movie makers, creators, etc – something BIG is coming in digital commerce, out of Africa to the world. We’re very close. It is a new layer because with our API you can turn your video into a marketplace where people can click and purchase.

I am honoured to be technical- and business-advising one of the finest prodigious mathematicians in Nigeria. They solve mathematics in computer vision and they engineer algorithms to recognize objects, etc. They build models ….it is amazing when you see this in action, from a simple phone.

Edekee: a new layer is digital commerce, powered by math juiced out of Nigeria. Enjoy this video.

Many check social media first before emails and I want to use this to communicate. I am writing specifically to Tekedia Capital Syndicate members. We sent an email and please check the Board. Do not discuss the company here. Keep everything on the Board.

Dear Member,

Greetings and Happy New Year again. I am writing because we have a really great opportunity which is emerging from a group of African diasporas and global medical science leaders. What they’re doing has a massive promise. In short, we have been looking for companies in this sector for an African play for months.

We have told the team that we would provide the remaining capital they need at the phase they are. In the Board, we have provided a short video on why we like the company and the very reason why the opportunity cannot wait till our next investment cycle which comes at the end of the quarter. We have great companies coming but the team for this specific company cannot wait for our time.

Login into the Board, watch the video along with the company’s pitch deck. We have also scheduled for the team to meet our members; date and Zoom link are provided. 

As always, if you have any questions, email our Admin.

Regards,

To learn more about Tekedia Capital, click here