Apple Acquired Mobeewave, a Startup That Lets Smartphones Accept Payments Using NFC

nicho said:
Sounds good for criminals.

Not to mention more inevitable antitrust investigations if they do this themselves but competitors have to use dongles.
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Giving party must smile to FaceTime camera to confirm transaction.
 
moabal said:
This is probably not the case as the employees of that company are still working on the product.
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How does that exclude the tactics?
You can still (forcefully) buy a competitor and of course... you will keep the employees until you have integrated the feature in your products. Recall Skype's acquisition by Microsoft and how soon after the main office in Stockholm where Skype was developed got shut down to reduce Microsoft's "geographical spread".
 
Anyone else think this is more going to be for countries that don't have high card use as it is? Given how inexpensive stuff like Square is (at least in the US), I don't see Apple competing where other options already exist.
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For me I really do not see many use cases for this. When I want to pay in a shop I use Apple Pay or cash (yes, we love cash here in Germany;)). When I want to transfer money to a friend I wire transfer it (which I could do using an app from my bank, if I want to) or just give him cash too.

For sure I am not the target group and the typical user, but I am wondering, what this would be used for. Maybe it is for countries who do not use wire transfers as much or with a not so wide spread banking infrastructure?
 
entropys said:
Definitely need Face ID or Touch ID to be secure.
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Yes! Credit cards can’t see them working would pose an issue. Go through a crowd, bus, concert with your iPhone picking up and collecting payments for those that manage to be close enough.

Heck, maybe this has been used in some for or another by a set techie thieves for pickpocketing without the actual picking.
 
wschutz said:
How does that exclude the tactics?
You can still (forcefully) buy a competitor and of course... you will keep the employees until you have integrated the feature in your products. Recall Skype's acquisition by Microsoft and how soon after the main office in Stockholm where Skype was developed got shut down to reduce Microsoft's "geographical spread".
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I apologize. I thought you were alluding to Apple buying the company and doing nothing with it.
 
Piggie said:
How much percentage of each transaction would apple take do you think for such a feature.
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It would really depend on what they're trying to do here. If they're just looking to have patent licenses so people can buy / pay for stuff easier and they just leave it totally up to the current MC / Visa duopoly. If they're wanting to change the way transactions are done in the U.S. (i.e. change the world here) so they're much less of a % taken by the processors then it would be much lower. Either scenario is plausible with these guys IMHO.

Frankly the U.S. govt should provide a cost free infrastructure backbone for wireless payments with user privacy (much as they do with cash), but with basically all non social issue laws now written by lobbyists (with both parties - which started in the 1970's) they're isn't a chance of such a thing happening (MC and Visa are very happy where they are in the market and their ~3.5% take of all credit transactions).
 
It is hard to believe that we have gone from manual cash registers like this for the 60's to pay with a card on a phone. :)

b775cb3baccb6d2412bdef2106b418d1--office-automation-cash-register.jpg
 
tmiw said:
Anyone else think this is more going to be for countries that don't have high card use as it is? Given how inexpensive stuff like Square is (at least in the US), I don't see Apple competing where other options already exist.
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It’s probably just for their own retail staff who use iPhones to accept payment.
 
I think now Stripe, Square etc will join the army of developers in congress complaining about Apple on the antitrust ground.
 
Wow... this could mean that sellers at markets and small businesses that can't afford card terminals could one day start accepting cards?
 
JMO1 said:
It’s probably just for their own retail staff who use iPhones to accept payment.
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Apple still needs to accept chip inserts, though, especially since contactless cards still aren't as common in the US as elsewhere. Hence why I was thinking it's for the countries where cards already aren't commonly being used, to get people to start using AP out of the gate.
 
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