Apple Fires Up Square Rivalry With Latest Feature

Apple Inc AAPL looks to launch a new Tap to Pay feature for the iPhone. It will offer merchants an alternative to Block Inc's SQ Square technology, Bloomberg reports.
The feature will allow people to buy goods from merchants in the U.S. through Apple Pay, credit cards, and digital wallets without additional hardware.
Apple will launch the feature using field communications (NFC) technology for making all kinds of payments, including between iPhones, to maintain user privacy.
Fintech services Stripe and Shopify Point will be the first to offer the "Tap to Pay" feature to business customers in the spring of 2022 in the U.S.
Analyst Rating: Barclays analyst Ramsey El-Assal inferred that the Apple solution would be available for payment platform operators and app developers to integrate into their iOS apps, which presumably includes Square's Point of Sale app.
Apple's approach suggests that iPhone Tap to Pay "may not be a competitive threat" to Square and instead may be additive, said El-Assal, who thinks "this should put to rest investor fears" that Apple will roll out a competing payments solution.
The analyst has an Overweight rating and $205 price target (19.4% upside) on Square parent Block, whose shares are down about 1.38% to $101.39 near midday following Apple's launch announcement this morning.
Price Action: AAPL shares traded higher by 1.31% at $173.91 on the last check Tuesday.