Apple ($AAPL) has acquired Mobeewave, a software startup that essentially transforms iPhones into digital cash registers and point of sales (PoS) devices without any additional hardware. The Apple-Mobeewave deal potentially counters Square ($SQ) for some types of cashless and mobile transactions.This is M&A deal 313 that ChannelE2E has covered so far in 2020. See the full M&A deal list here.Key Mobeewave investors included Samsung Venture Investment Corp., NewAlpha, Mastercard and Forestay Capital. The startup announced a $20 million Series B round in January 2019.Apple reportedly paid around $100 million to acquire Mobeewave. For Apple, that's a relatively small "tuck in" deal -- considering the iPhone and Mac giant had $193.8 billion cash on hand as of July 2020, according to the company's most recent earnings statement.
Apple Acquires Mobeewave: iPhones Become PoS Devices
Bloomberg, which first reported the deal, says Mobeewave's technology:"lets shoppers tap their credit card or smartphone on another phone to process a payment. The system works with an app and doesn’t require hardware beyond a Near Field Communications, or NFC, chip, which iPhones have included since 2014."
