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Apple will make a payment terminal out of the iPhone. How safe is it

There have been reports online that the American company Apple will add a payment terminal function to the iPhone this spring. What risk will be taken by users who have paid for the purchase in this way - in the material.

Pocket checkout

Apple plans to add a new feature to the iPhone that will turn a smartphone into a terminal for paying by card, Bloomberg reports citing sources. According to the company, mobile acquiring should help small businesses and deprive them of the cost of purchasing and maintaining additional equipment.

It is reported that Apple has been working on a new feature since 2020 - that's when it bought the Canadian startup Mobeewave for $100 million (about 7.9 billion rubles). The startup has developed a technology that allows smartphones to accept payments using bank cards. Payment will be made using an NFC chip, which is used for contactless payment in smartphones.

However, it is not known whether this feature will be added to Apple Pay, the company's proprietary contactless payment application. The team working on the mobile terminal feature is reportedly listed in the Apple Pay department after being transferred from Mobeewave.

According to Bloomberg sources, Apple may start implementing this feature in the next iOS 15.4 update, which is expected this spring.

It's dangerous

Kaspersky Lab's chief expert Sergey Golovanov, in an interview with, said that compared to conventional terminals, the payment method using a smartphone-terminal is rarely used.

“The cybersecurity risks associated with such payment are minimal; in our practice, such incidents have not yet been encountered. If, in the case of the iPhone, all financial and cyber security standards are taken into account, then the money will be reliably protected. However, when paying, users should remember that the usual methods of fraud and social engineering remain, so you can’t transfer your cards, devices to other people, provide confidential information and other data, ”said Golovanov.

Gem4me messenger business analyst Anastasia Ilyicheva, in turn, noted that attackers will be able to use some methods to steal funds from users of the new function.

“Scammers will be able to get data from a smartphone if they use a special reader for the NFC chip, and for this they will need to bypass the additional protection of the application itself in the phone,” Ilyicheva said.

She also noted that it is impossible to read information from a smartphone at a distance of more than one meter, which is why attackers will hack gadgets by loading them with viruses. After that, the smartphone will be able to transfer data to a third-party device of scammers.

“In order not to become a victim of scammers, it is recommended not to share your card data with anyone, not to let your smartphone fall into the wrong hands, not to download pirated applications to it, and not to open phishing emails that may contain viruses,” Ilyicheva advises.

The operational director of the Fast River fintech platform, Ksenia Artemyeva, said that such a technology would not bring new risks for users, but at the same time it could "strengthen" the old ones.

“Unauthorized withdrawals are happening now with classic POS terminals as well. Attackers simply bring the payment terminal with the amount entered in advance to the phone in their pocket and write off the money. This method exists and with the advent of the terminal function in the iPhone, it may become more common. We advise users to set mandatory confirmation for transactions through the Pay service using a passcode or a biometric scanner, if suddenly it is not configured now. And for bank cards with NFC, ask to reduce the payment limit without confirming with a pin code, ”Artemyeva concluded.

Apple will make a payment terminal out of the iPhone. How safe is it