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Apple and Stripe are also set to commoditize the small business Point of Sale that is Square's bread and butter. iPhones were just announced to soon accept contactless payments directly, and probably also the next iPad will include the required NFC hardware.

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The hardware is less important than the merchant account. The risk of charge backs means a small business accepting a credit card is effectively taking out a loan. Apple isn't going into that part of the value chain (so far).

Right, Apple is only providing the hardware and it requires to use a (partnered) processor, like Stripe, which was the example they used in their recent announcement. Stripe coincidentally sells chargeback protection as a service https://stripe.com/radar/chargeback-protection if that is a concern.

Exactly, afaict this feature's impact on Square is that online payment processors like Stripe have an easier path to competing for in person sales.

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