Apple is using it’s just announced September 12 event to show off the new NFC Wallet Pass feature of iOS 12 and watchOS 5 to invited journalists and guests running the iOS 12 beta. The new feature was unveiled at WWDC and will be used for the Student ID Passes that Assa Abloy and Blackboard are developing with Apple.
Apple clearly wants to promote NFC Passes in Wallet over clunky QR Codes and showed NFC Passes on Apple Watch in action with a Wembley Stadium NFC ticket gate in the WWDC18 Apple Pay session video. In the same session Apple software engineers explained how to strip out QR Codes in Wallet Passes and easily replace them with NFC.
It’s also clear that Apple wants to promote NFC Passes on Apple Watch over iPhone, the new Wallet feature will be shown off in the Apple Watch segment of the upcoming event.
UPDATE
Japanese IT journalist Junya Suzuki is saying there could be more NFC goodies and partners on tap for the September 12 event and the iOS 12 GM. Back at WWDC18 I wrote:
NFC Certificates should be the ticket for developers to gain NFC access that was not possible up to now… It will be fascinating to see what developers do with wider NFC Certificate distribution and what NFC passes/reward cards, and hopefully much more, that come out of it with iOS 12 and watchOS 5.
It would be in line with expectations if Apple announced some extra NFC Wallet goodies, such as NFC reward cards in addition to NFC Passes and Student IDs, during the keynote. It would be beyond expectations, but not far fetched, if Apple also announced Apple Pay Transit for MIFARE based Taiwan transit cards, FeliCa based Octopus Hong Kong transit cards or perhaps something else…like Apple Pay PASMO. We won’t know until the event as Apple has certainly cut code references out of the iOS 12 beta mix to keep the 9to5 Mac code spelunker elves at bay.
Enjoy the show.
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