Apple is working on allowing iPhones to directly accept payments through NFC without requiring any additional hardware and turn them into payment terminals. The feature will be rolled out in a future iOS update.

Bloomberg reports that Apple is planning on bringing this feature to the iPhone to allow small businesses to accept payments from customers without any additional investment. Right now, it is possible to accept payments from credit cards on an iPhone but requires an add-on like Square Reader or other similar payment terminal accessories.

The company has been reportedly working on this feature since 2020, when it paid $100 million to acquire the Canadian startup Mobeewave, which was working on the tech to allow smartphones to act as payment terminals via NFC. The feature will rely on the NFC chip found inside existing iPhones. The feature will seemingly only be available to iPhone customers in the US and select other countries.

Gurman claims that the feature will be a part of the iOS 15.4 beta that’s expected to be released soon, with the final OS release scheduled for the spring. iOS 15.3 did not contain any major new features, so it is possible that Apple introduces some major new features in iOS 15.4. What remains unclear is whether Apple will bundle this service into Apple Pay or call it something else altogether.