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No Contactless Payment System In Next iPhone
RedEaredSlider writes "Citing fears over a lack of an industry standard, Apple has ditched plans to include near field communication technology in its next iPhone, The Independent reports. The technology, which allows users to make payments simply by waving their devices over special readers, is widely believed to be the next major step in both cell phone and payment technologies. Apple's decision to avoid it is a significant blow to its adoption."
Can't have something in the device that would add 1 mm to the thickness!
Extra Extra! Apple may or may not be including something that has been previously rumored in their next iPhone! Won't somebody think of the children??
Anyone who call recall the past 15 years knows that logic does not make any sense
Apple hasn't figured a away to get fee's from sellers and customers yet.
Has this become the official iPhone gossip site?
Every too often an article like this comes which has no substance. It's not news for nerds, it doesn't matter.
Apple's decision to avoid it is a significant opportunity for Android phones. Apple is learning the wrong lessons from Microsoft.
Great disappointment. I was really hoping Apple would jump start the NFC revolution with the iPhone 5. What's the problem in not having an industry standard?! They would have CREATED one!
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
Many mobile payment vendors were (are) holding their breath for NFC on Apple devices.
There is already the Galaxy, RIM has promised NFC. Apple would really push this over the top.
I am really tired of carrying various cards for mass transit, etc. and I would love to consolidate these w/my phone.
My son works for a bank. They gave him a test phone that he could swipe over appropriate card readers just like some credit cards. When people saw it they said "Where can I get a phone like that?" Definiately a market out there.
Really. Who cares?
You may need to connect to App Store or iTunes for NFC to work, as that is the only way Apple can become the middle man and milk money from both sides. Does anyone know how secure NFC is over the air against third person snooping around?
Whereas I applaud Apple's continued success in the mobile arena, I doubt that its 'refusal' to implement NFC is that major a blow. You see, the tech world has learned to move on with or without Apple.
But do not be surprised is Apple is continuously testing and improving this 'rejected' tech to later 'implement'.
Do you think folks at Samsung, HTC and the rest are that sleepless over Apple's decision? I doubt.
I don't want it in the phones......its bad enough being on the credit cards!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCd3YLAn8Kw
Google doesn't seem to be having problems with the concept and is pushing it (with manufacturers' buy-in) into current Android phones now. Perhaps Apple is having the "not invented here" syndrome??
From the article: "But Apple isn't completely abandoning the idea of mobile payments. Instead, the company plans to implement its own contactless payment technology,"
Oh! So Apple just wants to find another revenue stream from their own proprietary "solution"..... got it! It has nothing to do with "industry standards", it has to do with trying to create and force a "standard".
Right now I'm very resistant to any sort of NFC device - too many "security" decisions seem to be driven by vendors who keep their heads intentionally planted in the sand. These folks seem to think we live in a world where the bad guys would never overpower a remote reader, where gathered data is then only transmitted over secure wireless networks, and where design decisions never trump best security practices.
And no - I don't have any RFID-enabled credit cards.
#DeleteChrome
1. Get card with PayPass (or equivalent)
2. Duct tape to iPhone
3. Profit
Actually, I just tried it out and mine fits inside the outer shell of my (non-apple) smartphone, looking at it you'd never know it was there...
And by "Citing fears over a lack of an industry standard", they mean that they don't want to follow Google's lead with their NFC enabled phone, so instead they are working secretely with Nokia to come out with a competing standard, screwing over consumers who just want something that works -- much like the DVD-RAM/Blu-Ray debacle where no one could decide on a standard so early adopters had to pick one and hope they picked the industry leader.
All I see is people complaining about this. But isn't this a good thing? Didn't anyone read the first few words in the summary, "Citing fears over a lack of an industry standard"?
One of the biggest things people complain about with Microsoft (and other companies as well, including even Apple sometimes) is that they invent their own "standards" (or implement standards in ways that aren't in fact standard) and ruin the possibility of interoperability with products from other companies. That generates no end of woe. Isn't it the geek's dream to have IT companies adhere to industry standards?
And here a company is actually paying attention to industry standards! But this is Apple. Slashdotters are going to complain. If they did the exact opposite and invented their own thing, Slashdotters would complain as well.
Isn't the lack of a industry standard the huge blow to its adoption?
That the biggest indicator of slashdot's downfall is that every single article posted is immediately met by a claim that the inclusion of said article indicates the site's downfall.
Nokia had several phones that did this. some massively old.
I had a Nokia 3220 years ago when I was in europe and used it to pay for bus fare in germany.
Nice to see apple and the others pulling a microsoft and trying to make an innovation something that is old tech.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This will probably be a big deal for me when I go to renew my phone.
Isn't Android the market leader right now? With Apple pretty much splitting 2nd place with RIM?
It would seem to me that having this roll out in devices belonging to #1 would only strengthen their position.
Or does the RDF extend to markets everywhere? Will businesses avoid implementing it due to the runner up not having it?
I'm genuinely curious. Not trying to troll.
No sig for you!!
Prediction: if there's no accepted standard within a year, Apple will create one. Further prediction: Slashdotters will universally hate it. The remaining 99.999% of the world will love it.
Ah, what an relief for ATM-skimmers: no contact required, ISO standard doesn't yet specify any protection against man-in-the-middle. Even if it would be so, the communication is small in size and one can easily jam the receiver and force the attempt of the same transaction enough numbers of time to have a good base for a cryptographic attack... especially since part of the encrypted information is known (the total of the docket).
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Not what they said, but this is a *serious* issue. Iphones can be pwned (and android is far worse), and the current iphone hardware architecture provides no mitigating capabilities whatsoever. Apple needs to redesign their hardware before they put our money at risk.
Steve Jobs blinked. This is a repeat run of Gordon Brown's phoney election. Can't be long now before the scandals and infighting erupt within Apple. Steve Jobs has lost his mojo. He's dead man walking. A burned out autistic. He should just resign now when he has some reputation to salvage.
Sure, I like Apple stuff because it's well designed but all this aspirational bullshit doesn't mean a thing if you can't afford it. After tinkering with a Hackintosh I lost interest. It was just too much hard work and there didn't seem much point in feeding Steve Jobs ego.
What Steve Jobs doesn't get is when you lose contact with the middle ground and people at the bottom you lose lost contact with reality and the driving force behind the market. Like politics has given Britain three Tory parties we now have three Microsofts. Like voter participation crashed expect the IT market to crash.
Again /. with shitty apple news. Well, about the topic: Cant we use existing 2.4Ghz wifi hardware with new firmware/software to do the same thing? Maybe reserve a channel and use it for this? I wouldn't be as efficient because this frequency is designed for other purposes, but would work and the advantage of using existing hardware is huge.
There is no standard for this yet and I would rather see vendors like Apple staying out of it than picking sides and trying to push their "choice", including a non-standard that may or may not work depending on where you shop would make any device that chose a loosing technology obsolete much faster than they already become obsolete.
I have to wonder do many people even really want this? I've had my phone stolen before and it was hours before I noticed, plenty of time for someone to clean me out if they desired. Even with id checks supposedly required to make purchases its shocking how many times I go somewhere and just swipe without a glance using my credit card, any safeguards that could be encouraged would do nothing but make it the same hassle as using a credit or debit card now.
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The contactless payment system was introduced in Japan in 2004 by DoCoMo and Sony.
I don't know about the states, but Canada has wide adoption of contact-less credit cards*. In almost all the gas stations in my area, and many stores, I can simply hold up my wallet with my credit card in it to pay for things. No swiping necessary. This is a huge convenience IMO. I realize you may say "but how much work is it really to take the card out of your wallet, and swipe it?" Physically it's not a lot of extra effort, but the card readers often don't work the first time, and when you're freezing your ass off trying to put gas in the car, those extra seconds saved really help. And, not having to remove the card is also a plus.
Anyways, I think all of these future conveniences are just that anyways - small upgrades that we don't "need", but I guess we really have run out of things to innovate, so there it is.
*note - visa and mastercard mailed out cards with a chip and contact-less support about a year and a half ago, while this shift was occurring. At first I was upset, because having to remember another PIN for a credit card was annoying, but the lack of swipe made me happy.
You apparently don't understand the security problems.
They've been doing contactless train passes in Japan for a couple of years now, and, even with that, the security is ridiculous. In Japan, no less.
The train companies had to abandon one kind of contactless card because they are so easy to crack. They're going to have to abandon another, which is going to cost them a huge amount of money re-tooling gates.
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Dwolla yet. They've just gotten the ball rolling, but it's quite an innovative payment system, and they've already got phone-based payments set up.
because all the standards leak like your old crock pot.
Contactless contact is a serious security problem when it's used for money or anything else important, although I suppose a cell phone processor would have enough oomph to get closer to secure than the contactless credit cards.
Which is another piece of the problem, all the current non-standards are hobbled by the power/speed requirements of a battery-less SOC you can squeeze into a credit card. (Which is why the current lack of standards is actually a good thing.)
The tech just isn't there yet, no matter what google and others may be doing. I'm personally wishing that the members of the industry would recognize that the tech will never be adequate and just give it up, but there is a possibility, if they do it right and use the higher power available in a cell phone, that the result could be significantly better than a credit card. (Still too leaky, but an improvement, as it were.
Some apps, liked TabbedOut, are doing this sort of thing without the NFC stuff. It's kind of interesting.
Didn't the japanese already do this?
They are getting destroyed by Android, just obliterated. I hear massive layoffs are on the way, they are selling off most of their campus. Doomed.
...literally all the way to the bank.
You still think this is a race to be first to a feature. Meanwhile, Apple is printing money.
Apple doesn't support its users purchasing Blu-ray and thats an industry standard which they are part of the Board of Directors.
Why?
Because they want people purchasing only through iTunes.
Unless the charges can be linked to the iTunes account and Apple takes a nice cut of it, it won't be supported. Apple fans will defend that option as the smart thing to do and believe the PR BS.
Lets start the rumor of iBucks.
I work for a large North American bank who issues credit cards. We already do Chip & Pin cards in Canada and Europe, and we're piloting several contactless payment methods in the U.S., including Visa PayWave and MasterCard Paypass.
NFC enables more than just payments, but it is the most visible and most widespread use of the tech so far. I think the security concerns are over blown - current implementations require a PIN entry on the phone itself to "unlock" the merchant's request for authorization, and the ability to use a challenge/response type exchange in the underlying technology is vastly superior to the old mag stripe and signature process that is still the standard in the U.S. Others will point to standard Chip & PIN with a swipe card that interfaces with an integrated circuit as more established, but I can tell you the systems in Europe and Canada are VERY unlikely to catch on in the U.S. because there is such a huge population of installed merchant terminals. Also, the current merchant terminal installed base is more "down-market" enabling more small businesses, and there is generally more old equipment floating around. Finally fraud rates in the U.S. are MUCH lower than in other parts of the world, (plus cardholders are not generally liable) so there is not as much incentive to invest in the added expense of upgrading all the merchants out there. For all these reasons, NFC is seen as the future in credit card payment processes by a number of people and institutions in the U.S. credit card market. A lot of companies that play in the credit card space (issuers, merchant banks, processors) are getting involved in the tech, so the biggest hold ups at this point are getting devices in the hands of the merchants and the cardholders. Issuers are eager for NFC solutions because they don't have to upgrade the cardholder's plastic - instead it's built into your phone, or you upgrade your phone with a special MicroSD card or NFC enabled case, or it's a completely separate fob.
The technology is coming, so this is move by Apple is in my opinion less about possible compatibility issues, and more about their perceived opportunity to create their own walled garden of payments.
Bah, who cares. I'm not dropping carrying my Credit cards anytime soon. So this is just a security risk
Paypass/Rfid chips can easily be zapped by a common household microwave. Now how do I do this with my phone?
Actually, I'm totally okay with this as long as it stays as an opt-in feature. (tie your credit card(s) into your phone). Once Verizon starts billing me randomly for pizzas and gas, that's when I don my Slashdot trademarked tinfoil hat.
"No industry standard" means "Google is about to set the industry standard with their Google Checkout NFC consoles and all the NFC IP they are developing and acquiring, and we wouldn't want to encourage or condone that until Google has a good competitor in the NFC space".
Clearly they haven't had enough time to give it an Apple branded name. Firewire, Thunderbolt, PayField?
The only thing all this rumor mill and speculation does is generate ad revenue for all the rumor sites.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
It's been here for years. Huge step. Thanks for keeping up western cell phone companies.
The NFC industry suffers from two bigs issues.
1. Huge installed base. There's already lots and lots of installed contactless systems : while many are supposed to follow standards, the standards are unfortunately not good enough to make sure that a NFC phone that would work in London would also work in Amsterdam.
2. Unclear business model. NFC involves too many powerful stakeholders : SIM card manufacturers, mobile phone manufacturers, service providers (banks, transportation operators), mobile telcos ... They all want a vut of the action: making them all agree on a clear business model is very difficult.
I hoped that the combined pressure and will of mighy Google and Apple would finally move things forward. Looks like the complexity of NFC defeated another big corp.
Nobox: Only simple products.
Citing fears over a lack of an industry standard, "
Then in just a bit you said:
From the article: "But Apple isn't completely abandoning the idea of mobile payments. Instead, the company plans to implement its own contactless payment technology"
So how is that not a format war? It would seem Apple is not adding NFC to avoid a format war caused by it adding NFC.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you're a fucking moron and don't have a keylock on your phone
The whole point of the contactless payment systems is you wave your phone over something and it's paid for.
Otherwise it would be too much bother and you'd just use a credit card.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seriously. We have these NFC systems all round London - predominantly with the 'Oyster' card system that's used for public transport and stuff. You see all these people in the busy rush-hour waving their hands wildly in the direction of the reader to register their card.
I can just imagine the scenario if the same people start waving their £500+ iPhones around 2-3 feet away from their body - thieves everywhere will be rubbing their hands with glee and just hanging around near the readers to grab the phones away from these people and disappear into the crowd with them. They won't get caught on the myriads of CCTV cameras either as they around when they steal wallets, purses and the like.
Slashdot has only 60000 members?
Negotiations are still ongoing, but so far Apple has not been able to convince enough shops to give Apple a 30% cut of their revenue.
I wish I could feel better about apple. Every time I read abut how they are worried they are going to loose a niche, I feel like I'm getting bent over.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
On this one I'll side with Apple. Adoption of WHAT standard? Afaik there's no industry consensus on the matter and each group of vendors tries to push their own standard. Another HDDVD vs Bluray war.
Sure, Google is strong-arming things their way, but I think Apple is playing it wisely here by waiting it out and seeing how this one plays out. It's not like everybody out there is at the edge of their toes about NFC. Let's get real about it.
I'm no longer fed up with MS Windows: I go rid of them
For a short time there was a cooperative experiment going on with MTA, PATH, and NJ Transit which provided a unified sytem of fares that connected a small set of NJ bus lines in the Hoboken/Jersey City area to the New York subway via Path using MasterCard swipe technology. After spending several months installing the neccessary hardware the experiment was yanked about 3 months or less after start up with the only announcement that the program was ending without commentary. At about the same time, similar "Paypass" payments that I used to make at Duane Reade and Seven/Eleven stopped being processed by Chase, again with no published reason. It seems to be good indication that NFC has a lot of "not there yet" in terms of security.
I'll say it slowly this time.
Apple isn't trying to be first to any feature; that's not their business model and that's not why they are making billions and billions.
The main reason is that this is a solution in search of a problem. swiping a card takes too long?
There are a few big problems with this.
1) People will have to stop texting/talking and wave their phone in front of something.
2) No batteries, no purchase..
.... this was available in Europe and Japan. I was under the impression that resistance to adopting one of these (existing) technologies was due to credit card companies' resistance to letting handset and/or wireless providers get a toehold in the payment clearing business.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think what people forget is that they want control over their spending in some way.
Here's how it could go down. Right now you can find the Mastercard PayPass everywhere... well at least everywhere I go out West Canada/USA
Now how this gets combined with the iPhone is that instead of having a always-on NFC that people can read without stealing your wallet, you put two-factor authentication, one the iPhone doesn't turn it on unless you tell it, and two tells you how much you're going to be charged for the transaction. Let the iPhone download the purchase data to the phone that would normally only goto mastercard, and voila... now you can track your spending and know what personal info is being handed out.
Of course it's probably not going to be so elaborate. But I'd love for the U-scans to be able to upload the receipt to my phone so I don't have have piles of receipts.
I have been looking at this area over the last few days and would like to know if anyone here actually has knowledge of the NFC protocols in use. Yes: Hong Kong, London, supposedly Korea and parts of Europe have contactless card systems in place. However, what protocols do they use? Do they only work for stored value cards? What protocols are the Visa and Mastercard offerings planning to use? Without interactivity, how do consumers validate the transaction ... surely a rogue point placed near a real one could steal/skim money? In each link-layer wireless + higher level protocol scheme, is a UID broadcast to the terminal, allowing user tracking? Will Google leave their NFC implementation open to innovation or lock it down to their "one true protocol / Google Market platform?"
Some thoughts:
1. NFC, as long as it's not locked down by Google's Android API to work exclusively through their "one true platform" could be a great enabler for Bitcoin and other alternative currency systems
2. For NFC without prepay, you need on-screen validation and very-near or touch-based connectivity (to frustrate skimming / fake charge-points), which destroys the speed and attractiveness of the solution. Workarounds include pre-payment at a separate physical location (such as a kiosk), such that the actual 'use' swipe becomes a validation rather than a charge (removing the user interaction/confirmation delay). This is presumably the direction mass transit will go.
3. For anything to go wholly NFC, it can't require the user to buy a pricey phone as lots of people can't afford them, and the credit culture is undergoing a refreshing quashing even here in the US
4. Mastercard and Visa both have in-card strategies for NFC already
5. Results of trials in some first world countries (eg; Australia) are reportedly very positive, with 70-80% of people liking the technology.
OK, so after further research it seems MiFare and Felica are two standards in use.
The Android API for NFC is already available: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/nfc/package-summary.html
It states the following with regard to supported formats.
"It is mandatory for all Android NFC devices to provide the following TagTechnology implementations.
NfcA (also known as ISO 14443-3A)
NfcB (also known as ISO 14443-3B)
NfcF (also known as JIS 6319-4)
NfcV (also known as ISO 15693)
IsoDep
Ndef on NFC Forum Type 1, Type 2, Type 3 or Type 4 compliant tags
It is optional for Android NFC devices to provide the following TagTechnology implementations. If it is not provided, the Android device will never enumerate that class via getTechList().
MifareClassic
MifareUltralight
NdefFormatable must only be enumerated on tags for which this Android device is capable of formatting. Proprietary knowledge is often required to format a tag to make it NDEF compatible."
In short, the above suggests that 'NDEF' is actually a bridge between disparate incompatible standards that aims to hide implementation-specific complexities for Android developers. Android developers can then interact with all of them regardless of technology.
With so many systems already out there, this strategy appears to be far superior to the alternative of choosing one as a global standard or embedding technology-specific hardware in phones shipped to certain markets.
Actually it is easier to just walk by and keep moving.
Since most users of the busy metro system don't have NFC equipped phones, there's no reason for NFC to be installed.
In fact, I'd wager my current(non-NFC) equipped phone, that most users of *any* busy metro system don't even know what NFC is.
So...you have to install the "old tech" terminal anyway, or it is actually already there and paid for and revenue strapped gov trans agencies will not want to spend the millions to equip all the terminals with the NFC tech which will currently be used by less than 0.001 % of their users and by less than 10% of their users in 10 years.
In ten years they will have facial recognition and admission/billing based on that anyway. You just go to the trans office, give your contact/banking info, they take a pic, and you're on your way. Then they drain your account as you walk by the terminal.
NFC is a pointless waste.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Don't you?
You know you'd be required to give account information and authorize Apple/ATT/Verizon/etc. to access(withdraw from) your account in order to use *any* feature of your phone.
Hell, they might even require you to open a special account in the Apple I-bank and of course make a minimum deposit, and require that you maintain a minimum balance(which they earn interest on)...the list goes on.
Apple lovers will dive right in regardless.
Other than that, how about if I don't like it, I don't have to buy/pay for it?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
You're funny, pitiful but funny.
Apple would require that you open an account at their I-bank, keep a minimum balance, etc.
Otherwise you don't get to use your phone. ;-)
That's Apple.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Since most users of the busy metro system don't have NFC equipped phones, there's no reason for NFC to be installed.
Chicken and egg.
In fact, I'd wager my current(non-NFC) equipped phone, that most users of *any* busy metro system don't even know what NFC is.
You owe me your phone, through you probably could argue that most users are just average people who don't know the name "NFC" and just know they can pay for their rail ticket with a wave of a phone. Worlds busiest rail transit in Japan already supports it, and it's currently breaking through where I live. Quote below taken from wikipedia:
NFC vendors in Japan are closely related to mass-transit networks, like the Mobile Suica used on the JR East rail network. Osaifu-Keitai system, used for Mobile Suica and many others including Edy and nanaco, has become the de-facto standard method for mobile payments in Japan. Its core technology, Mobile FeliCa IC, is partially owned by Sony, NTT DoCoMo and JR East. Mobile FeliCa utilize Sony's FeliCa technology, which itself is the de-facto standard for contactless smart cards in the country.
Other NFC vendors mostly in Europe use contactless payment over mobile phones to pay for on- and off-street parking in specially demarcated areas. Parking wardens may enforce the parkings by license plate, transponder tags or barcode stickers. First conceptualized in the 1990s, the technology has seen commercial use in this century in both Scandinavia and Estonia. End users benefit from the convenience of being able to pay for parking from the comfort of their car with their mobile phone, and parking operators are not obliged to invest in either existing or new street-based parking infrastructures. Parking wardens maintain order in these systems by license plate, transponder tags or barcode stickers or they read a digital display with their eyes in the same way as they read a pay and display receipt.
The real reason it's not broken through fully yet is not in the technology - that has been ready for a while. The real problem is that current credit/debit payment processors (read: banks and financial institutions) do not want to give up a piece of this very lucrative pie to mobile operators and phone vendors, and are stonewalling this process asking for more money.
I think due to RF certification and space issues, Apple dropped the idea of having NFC built into the iPhone 5.
But I do think Apple may approve or develop on its own a low-profile adapter that plugs into the 30-pin iPod dock connector on the iPhone 5 that becomes the NFC transceiver, which would allow the iPhone 5 to do NFC transactions with the right app loaded. It would at most add 5 to 7 mm to the height of the iPhone 5.
The thing about short-range networking, is that is has many uses. Like any other tech, some are stupid and some are smart.
Getting people to spend money is how you justify the tech to assholes. Some assholes are powerful. For example, if the iPhone had a spend-money-by-NFC API that got Apple a cut of each transaction, they might have been more inclined to keep the IPhone up-to-date.
Then in real life, you use the tech for what it's actually useful for. More realistically useful applications for NFC leap to mind pretty easily. e.g. Put your phone next to your wife's phone when you're asleep, and let them negotiate the OTP that you'll be using for the next day's conversations... (Low-power IR used to be the way you explained this to people in the past, but IR isn't "cool" anymore. And that's ok. NFC is just as good, probably even better (though surely more expensive to implement).)
The idea is to use the tech for things that nobody in power really gives a fuck about (or is even hostile to), but to get them to pay to include it, thinking that you'll do something stupid with it, like using it to give manufacturers a cut of all your transactions. ;-)
In the old days, tech was motivated by use demand; build a better mousetrap and people will want it. The phone market isn't really going that way, so you need to use tricks like dual-use techs. Always throw a fake use-case to the assholes. You don't have to use it; just get them thinking that a certain aspect of the better mousetrap gives them (rather than their customers) some kind of angle.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.