Square Launches EMV/Apple Pay Reader

Amid the news of IPOs, ratchets and general financial metrics, it is easy to forget that Square actually makes equipment and deals with mobile payments.

Monday (Nov. 23) served as a bit of a reminder that Square is still in the payments game, with news that the company is debuting new mobile payment readers at 100 local businesses nationwide, which allows them to take chip cards, as well as Apple Pay.

[bctt tweet=”Monday served as a bit of a reminder that Square is still in the payments game.”]

As USA Today noted, the news “is a big deal for Square … It also adds momentum to Apple’s efforts to spread Apple Pay more broadly.” The contactless readers were announced in June at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference. The process: Apple-empowered customers can use their hardware via the Apple Watch or iPhones to facilitate contactless payments. And, as might be expected, the consumers using the chip cards can insert them into the reader, per usual.

USA Today reported that the movement to get such payments accepted at small, local enterprises is a strong tailwind for success, with Apple going up against Android Pay within the mobile transactions arena. In terms of competition, the Samsung Pay and Android Pay offerings can be used with Square’s new reader, so no one technology has a monopoly here. For growth, though, Apple has said, at least as of earlier in 2015, that it had been adding as many as 60,000 merchants on a monthly basis, who were signing on to take up contactless Apple Pay-enabled terminals, and that number has been boosted to 100,000 small to mid-sized merchant locations each month.

Samsung Pay has said that its own ability to work with near-field communications platforms through POS and older magnetic stripe technology represents an advantage in the field.