Apple Pay is threatening to put mobile payments companies like Square and PayPal out of business when it launches next month, but according to Square co-founder Jack Dorsey, Apple Pay isn’t actually a threat to his company.
Dorsey revealed yesterday that Square is hoping to use Apple Pay to its advantage by building a new register for sellers that accepts Apple Pay and pretty much every other form of payment you can slide across a counter.
“We’re building a register so that sellers can accept a credit card, so they can accept cash, so they can accept a cheque, so they can accept Bitcoin and so they can accept any form of payment that comes across the counter including future ones and burgeoning ones like Apple Pay.”
Launching next month with support on the iPhone 6, 6 Plus and Apple Watch, the Apple Pay system will allow users to pay for items at brick and mortar locations by using Touch ID coupled with NFC to verify payments. The simplistic interface doesn’t replace users’ credit cards altogther, but rather stores digital encrypted versions of them on the device’s secure element.
According to Dorsey, Apple’s adoption of NFC could finally bring the technology into the technology. “It really hasn’t taken off because there hasn’t a huge consumer demand for it. We think Apple may change that.”
Dorsey reiterated that he doesn’t view Apple as a threat because Square doesn’t build a credit card, and they don’t build a payment device at all.
“They’re building something that allows a credit card to be used in another place, but they’re not building a terminal. We are a terminal, we a register and we accept payments, so there’s no threat, there’s no competition there at all.”
Source: CBC
