Apple acquires mobile payment technology for $100 Million

A Canadian tech startup, Mobeewave that work on payment technology specifically was acquired by Apple for a whopping $100 million. This technology enables the iPhone to act as a payment terminal. The development was reported by Bloomberg. The acquisition could help Apple extend its payment reach with merchants for Apple Pay.

The payment technology that the company invented is quite simple and requires only the NFC chip to work with. It allows users to tap on their smartphones or credit cards to another device for processing payment. Since all iPhones after iPhone 6 are integrated with the NFC chip, the technology is compatible with all the iPhones currently available in the market. As per the blog post from Bloomberg, Apple is also retaining the entire team working for Mobeewave, which employs around 100 people. They will continue to work from Canada and the office will be considered as another remote office of Apple Inc.

Interestingly, Samsung is also an investor in the company. It has partnered with Mobeewave last year to enable Samsung smartphones to use the company's technology. This resulted in a pilot program with over 10,000 downloads of Samsung's POS app, which smaller businesses used to boost sales. Apple has a history of buying startups and technologies to use as their own. This will be an addition to the list of startups Apple has bought, allowing anyone to use an iPhone to accept payments without any additional piece of hardware.