Whilst this question has obviously been asked before, year's have gone by since then. Apple has released a new NFC spec in that time and further software updates indicate more speculation in this area.
A smartphone has an NFC chip. Is it possible to harness this to take an EMV payment from a contactless card or eWallet? This would obviously require an installed EMV kernel to securely process the payment and possible a means of accessing the secure layer for any PIN entry.
As much as this may seem like an ambiguous question, clearly the hardware is capable. Is it possible / legal / licensed in anyway yet. There is a service that claims to be working on it called PHOS.
Quite obviously, SO is not the right place for such a question as it's unrelated to programming. There's quite a lot of discussion regarding the topic and answers also will tend to be opinion based.
Up to this moment, it hasn't been possible on Apple (due to closed ecosystem, not hardware incompatibility) and became allowed for Android. Technically it's been possible for a while already, but regulations made consumer grade devices incapable of acceptance - they are still quite terrible in the physical aspect as they are not designed to either handle entries securely as well as generate the electromagnetic field according to EMVCo requirements as to the shape and operating volume. Payment schemes have generated as list of special criteria for solutions based on consumer grade devices and the company you mentioned is one of many that have been working on it. There certainly are already some production deployments with limits that have been set by the schemes.
There might be changes in Apple approach (especially as they acquired a company dedicated to such solutions) or not. This is just speculation. The fact is that consumer devices tend not to be as good as dedicated hardware but only time will tell if this stays true. Security research is ongoing, we shall see the results and how will that affect companies policy and further development in the area. It's just too early too tell.