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Apple Locks iPhone 6/6+ NFC To Apple Pay Only
Ronin Developer writes From the Cnet article: "At last week's Apple event, the company announced Apple Pay — a new mobile payments service that utilizes NFC technology in conjunction with its Touch ID fingerprint scanner for secure payments that can be made from the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus or Apple Watch. Apple also announced a number of retailers that would accept Apple Pay for mobile payments at launch. However, Cult of Mac reports that NFC will be locked to the Apple Pay platform, meaning the technology will not be available for other uses. An Apple spokesperson confirmed the lock down of the technology, saying developers would be restricted from utilizing its NFC chip functionality for at least a year. Apple declined to comment on whether NFC capability would remain off limits beyond that period." So, it would appear, for at least a year, that Apple doesn't want competing mobile payment options to be available on the newly released iPhone 6 and 6+. While it's understandable that they want to promote their payment scheme and achieve a critical mass for Apple Pay, it's a strategy that may very well backfire as other other mobile payment vendors gain strength on competing platforms.
Considering Republicans are so against NFC and haven't allowed any bank to invest in this technology
Really?
Apple does realize that NFC isn't only used for payment systems, right? My camera can transfer pictures to a smart phone using NFC. It allows you to take high quality pictures of something and then post them straight to whatever social media you're using without going through a computer. It's a really nice feature when you're wandering around someplace photogenic and don't want to be limited to a cellphone camera.
Oh, right, Apple declared proper digital cameras "dead" in their iPhone 6 keynote. I guess that feature will never make it to iOS then.
Not to mention other types of data transfer that's possible with NFC like easily sharing contact information or things like that.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The same basic information came out on Ars Technica the other day. But the slant on that was not that Apple was locking out 3rd party credit card processors, but rather that the NFC hardware was not being used for anything else because Apple was not ready to say the whole stack was perfect yet, from a security standpoint. This is all new code and new hardware, for Apple, and they would rather not have stories about massive credit card theft come out next week. So, this is an example of slant driving angry diatribes in the comments; if it'd been presented in a more neutral tone people would have judged Apple's actions in a more balance way.
iPhone is extremely popular here. Apple has been popular in general in Japan for a long time, so the brand carries it's weight pretty well here. Most iPhone users just put a cover on their iPhone that they can put their NFC card into and use it that way. The NFC card company then has an iPhone app to manage how much ÃfÃÂ¥ is on the card, etc...
Good job in exposing your ignorance. Apple Pay uses the contactless specification of the EMV standard to provide "industry-standard EMV-level security” -- essentially the existing SoftCard EMV standard. There will be no wait, Apple Pay can be used wherever Softcard is deployed.
Here. Read this and the associated documents.
Apple Pay's adds onto the SoftCard a level of security in using the secure fingerprint reader & in not being able to see user transactions (whereas Google Wallet leaves itself in the loop so that they CAN see each transaction).
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
You regularly use NFC for payments? You must be some kind of wizard.
The US isn't the world.
I live in Canada and I also regularly use NFC for payments. Last night I bought groceries with NFC after I bought some diesel with NFC. At the beer store I bought beer with NFC. I bought some irrigation supplies with NFC.
Some restaurants have NFC on the little pay terminals they bring to your table.
The iPhone is popular here but I wouldn't say as popular as it used to be, or is in other countries.
Actually quite the opposite - iOS marketshare is huge here, and doesn't show much sign of slowing down. Here is a handy table.
If Apple proceeds with locking away the NFC API from developers they will be making a Huge mistake. NFC is not just for payments, it is a use agnostic technology, and as such can be used anywhere you need short (1-2") data communications i.e.
# Door locks / home security
# Wifi tap to secure.
# Bluetooth Pairing
# End to end encrypted messaging tap to exchange / sign public keys
# Second factor online authentication
etc etc.
On Android all these uses are available because the API is open.
Apple's iPhone 5s Is The Dominant Smartphone In Japan
essentially the existing SoftCard EMV standard
SoftCard EMV standard? Wow, that's like calling HTTP the Google networking standard. EMV existed long before SoftCard (formerly called ISIS), and in fact long before Google Wallet (which predated SoftCard/ISIS by quite some time)... before NFC existed, even.
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More recent stats: http://bcnranking.jp/news/1408...
Why pick stats from one particular month instead of the latest ones?
Also note that the iPhone has few models, where as sales for other manufacturers are spread over many more different ones. According to those stats over 70% of phones sold are not iPhones, and that's despite the extremely heavy promotion.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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The problem with Google's implementation is that Google wants to be the payment provider. This is "better" in some ways because it means more flexible funding schemes (Apple requires Visa, MasterCard or American Expess). However, it has a major downside - Google is now a major participant in your transactiona because the retailer charges Google, and Google charges your payment provider, so now Google gets the details of your transaction, which depending on the retailer can include what item you actually bought.
The other downside is it means Google has to work with every payment system out there to get them to accept Google Wallet as a valid payment mechanism.
Apple's method means it works anywhere that accepts contactless Visa, MasterCard or American Express cards. Because Apple Pay appears to the retailer as a regular credit card so retailers have to do zero effort. Google Wallet makes it so they have to sign up with new payment providers and all that to specially take Google Wallet.
Use Apple Pay and Apple doesn't know about the transaction as it's a more standard credit card transaction that's handled between banks.
As for NFC restricted to Apple Pay? That's iOS 8. It most likely means the APIs for it are far from stable and/or Apple doesn't have a good way of handling events in NFC under the current security architecture. iOS9 can easily change it.
it's just like TouchID - last year it was only for bypassing the PIN and for iTunes purchases. In iOS8 it's allowed to be used for third party authentication in apps. You can bet iOS9 will have NFC APIs for app use.