Block shares lower on report Apple to let iPhones accept payments without extra hardware, page-3

Whilst it is true Apple will now be directly competing with Square on some product lines, I think it's misleading to imply the 3% drop on the SQ price was caused by the Bloomberg article or Apple announcement - in case anyone didn't notice the share price dropped about that or more every day for at least a week prior to that article and announcement.

Square does a bit more than just the hardware for card reading - such as Square Invoices - which is a software solution for simple billing and payment collection (card not present payment scenarios) - plus point of sale software - it will be interesting to see what - if anything - Apple does in that regard.

Apple acquired Mobeewave which was working on using NFC in iOS and Android devices - so this looks like it might partly be a strategic acquisition to cut off the competing Android ecosystem and make iOS more compelling to consumers. I can't see much detail about Mobeewave's products or planned products as their web presence since the acquisition is now gone - so I can't say precisely how much overlap there is between what Mobeewave was developing and what Square currently offers.