The PayPal Here Card Reader Comes To U.S. With Support For EMV, Apple Pay, Android Pay & More
With the arrival of Apple Pay and, more recently, Android Pay, consumers are becoming more comfortable with alternative ways of paying that don't involve credit card swipes.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is a promise fulfilled: back in January PayPal said its Here platform would get an EMV-capable reader before year-end, and the U.S. launch delivers exactly that hardware, extended to accept Apple Pay and Android Pay rather than just chip cards. The timing matters because Square had already moved first on the same turf — its own chip reader shipped with Apple Pay support within weeks of PayPal's announcement, and by early 2016 Square was selling an NFC reader for $49 through US Apple Stores.
First-order effects
- Small merchants using PayPal Here gain one reader that covers EMV dip transactions plus Apple Pay and Android Pay tap-to-pay, closing the acceptance gap against Square's readers without buying separate hardware.
- Apple Pay and Android Pay become usable at any PayPal Here merchant overnight, expanding the wallets' physical footprints at zero cost to Apple or Google.
Second-order effects
- Square's response is already visible in the coverage: it matched on chip-and-signature support, then pushed distribution into retail via Apple Stores and added Android Pay compatibility to its $49 NFC unit, turning the reader into a feature-race where multi-wallet support is table stakes.
- PayAnywhere's move to put Apple Pay behind its reader across 300K US locations shows the same pressure spreading beyond the two leaders — every mobile reader vendor must now bundle contactless acceptance or cede merchants to those who do.
Third-order effects
- The reader business shifts from selling swipe dongles toward commoditized terminals whose differentiation lives in the software layer — pricing, analytics, wallet integrations — a pattern PayPal reinforced two years later when it deepened ties with Google through its partnership bringing Android Pay into its ecosystem.
- As wallets like Apple Pay become the default interface between consumers and point-of-sale hardware, the wallet provider gains leverage over which payment platforms reach customers, edging toward a wallet-as-permission-layer structure for offline commerce.
The trend: Mobile card readers are converging on a single EMV-plus-NFC standard, shifting competition from hardware features to the software ecosystems and wallets each terminal connects to.