The Apple Pay Beacon Trojan Horse

Apple’s latest effort to enhance Apple Maps involves offering smaller businesses the chance to add/edit their business location as well as giving them the chance to spruce up their profiles a bit by utilizing a new portal called Maps Connect.

Good, right?

Well, in addition to improving and enriching their company profiles, small businesses also have the chance to sign up for the iBeacon installation on Maps Connect. Aha!

This scheme has overall received a very high positive response rate. And due to high volume, Apple is prioritizing businesses with more than 1M visitors per day and offer WIFI throughout the premises.

We’ve written a lot about the allure and power of the iBeacon ecosystem, and now, Apple is going full bore on trying to bundle Businesses on maps to make its search more robust at the same time it is also working hard to proliferate beacons. And, at some of the largest businesses in the market.

Business owners can now sign in with an already existing Apple ID or simply sign up for a new one and begin to use the Maps Connect platform free of charge.

Sign up, as you would expect is surprisingly easy – well, if the business hits the hurdle rate. After filling out all the required fields, verification is required via phone or email.

After verification, businesses can then modify and beef up their company profiles by including details such as their business category, service hours, Yelp profile and social media links. Any changes or updates are uploaded to the Apple Maps servers and usually take about a week to appear according to Search Engine Land.

Apple also says it includes anti-fraud practices in Maps Connect, but how that works isn’t readily apparent.

Then, when all the necessary modifications are made to the business profile, Map Connects asks businesses to sign up for iBeacon installations.

Since 2012, Tim Cook has promised to create a more accurate and comprehensive mapping system. Hopefully the crowdsourcing efforts with Maps Connect will aid towards an overall improved Apple Maps.

And the sale of more iBeacons .. and merchant adoption of Apple Pay.

For additional news on Apple, visit the PYMNTS.com Apple Pay EcoSystem.