With the upcoming Apple event on Thursday it has all but been confirmed that we will see new iPads. While most of the specs and features seem to be leaking the closer we get, there is one thing that really has me thinking; NFC. It was brought up by Dan Moren on a recent episode of Clockwise and it made a lot of sense.

With Apple Pay on the latest release of iPhones, it would make sense that they would incorporate this into iPads as well since they like to keep the devices uniform. Would anyone really use Apple Pay with their iPads? I am sure someone would, but I think the real play here would be to set up the iPad as the register. It only makes sense that Apple would want to get into the game on that end as well. They could sell a custom dock to set it up this way and take a small fee on both sides. The biggest challenge for Apple Pay right now is getting the hardware into stores so they can accept payments this way. Selling their own version would just help that cause.

This is something Square has done already and there are other systems that help set this up as well. Square has done a lot for small business who don’t want to go through large banks and credit card companies to accept payment. There was speculation that Apple was going to acquire Square for a while, but like most things they want Apple can just move resources into making their own version.

While I don’t think this is something that will happen anytime soon, it could be something they are looking at for the future. NFC probably won’t make it onto the iPad this year. While Touch ID is rumored to be coming Thursday, it still took a year longer than the iPhone. NFC on the iPad could be a big boost to the Apple Pay system, even if it doesn’t arrive this year.