Weekend Wrap-Up: Square to Accept Apple Pay, Teams with Snapchat on Snapcash

It’s Weekend Wrap-Up time, folks! Here’s where we get you all caught up on the top tech stories from the past week. Companies making headlines include Square, Snapchat, Facebook and Aereo. Let’s find out why.

Square Plans to Accept Apple Pay

When it comes to payment processing technology, Square has always tried to stay ahead of the game. Square tried way back when to create a Wallet to encourage mobile payments. Square is also going to start processing chip and pin transactions in the near future. And now Square is promising to support the NFC-based Apple Pay service in 2015. Square card readers have been free to those who utilize the service, so it’ll be interesting to see if Square charges for readers with built-in NFC.

Square and Snapchat Tag Team on Snapcash

Remember what I said about Square trying to stay ahead? Here’s one way the company is doing that: a partnership with messaging app Snapchat on an in-app payments feature called Snapcash. The feature enables Square Cash-powered payments inside Snapchat, so you can both send a disappearing pic to a friend and, in the next message, send a couple bucks their way. It’s really a win for both companies, though it remains to be seen exactly how much the feature is used.

Facebook May Create Work-Focused Product

There are plenty of social networks for the work environment — think LinkedIn and Yammer, for example. But the largest social network in the world, Facebook, has stayed out of that side of the market. It appears the company won’t stay out for much longer; according to reports, Facebook is interested in creating a separate interface for work-based connections. There isn’t a whole lot of detail out there at this point in time, but we’ll stay on top of this one and update you with any news.

Aereo Files for Bankruptcy

Once upon a time, Aereo plotted and schemed to upend the television industry. Then the company lost a huge Supreme Court case and had to take its business model back to the drawing board. This week, we got some bad news about the company — Aereo has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The good news is that Chapter 11 isn’t as bad as Chapter 7; Aereo can continue to operate as it figures its financial situation out. But the company is currently operating without any real way to make money — how long can that last?