Square announced Thursday that it will begin supporting Apple’s Tap to Pay technology later this year with a beta test arriving this summer as part of the company’s Early Access program.
If a business currently uses Square to process sales, it must use Square’s well-known dongle to receive payments. With support for Apple’s Tap to Pay, it should be able to process a majority of payments using nothing but an iPhone and the Square app. The new program allows iPhone users to pay with their phone in Square’s Point of Sale (POS) app.
Apple first announced Tap to Pay in February 2022, first supporting Square’s competitor Stripe. The partnership with Stripe also supports payments in the Shopify POS app. The Tap to Pay feature is currently only available on iPhone models XS and later, and in between and requiring people to have cards or phones that support taps to pay for the Square dongle may not go away anytime soon. It’s appealing, to many merchants, how it allows them to easily take more forms of payment. The dongle may still be the best choice for many Square users.
Square said in its press release that seats for its Early Access program are limited and did not specify when the program would launch, but you can sign up for the program right now on Square’s website.