I’ve always said the iPhone SE2 hits the iPhone sweet spot in Asia, especially now. An affordable entry level device with face mask friendly Touch ID and Bionic powered Secure Element + global NFC: Express Cards with power reserve and Background NFC tag reading. It was almost a year ago when Jennifer Bailey unveiled NFC Tag Apple Pay. Steve Moser of MacRumors tweeted the essential features: tap and Apple Pay without an app or signing up for an account. Apple has not said a word since.
I think part of the problem for Apple is pictured in the slides accompanying Moser’s tweet, the ‘Pay with Apple Pay in app’ one. The allure of background NFC tag reading is that it’s almost ‘Express card lite’; as long as the screen is on, even locked, iPhone natively reads a NFC tag and does something like activate loaded and ready Apple Pay. The trouble is, only Bionic chip iPhone models do this. Non-Bionic iPhone models have to use an app to read NFC tags. Think quick, would you fire up an app, sign in, and read a NFC tag just to buy cheap coffee? Probably not.
My take is the entry level non-Bionic iPhone 8 is holding up NFC Tag Apple Pay. Apple Pay needs the entire iPhone lineup to be Bionic and app free, an entry level A13 Bionic iPhone SE2 solves this problem. It’s a perfect iPhone for the Japanese market in these face mask mandatory times where Face ID doesn’t work, and a nice match for the recently announced JCB NFC tag payment service that uses SmartPlate software. It probably won’t doesn’t have a U1 chip that would let iPhone SE2 have a longer service life as UWB Touchless joins NFC in iOS 14 Apple Pay. Nevertheless the iPhone SE2 with Bionic NFC will be more than ample, it will do very well.
Aquabit Spirals SmartPlate head Tomo Hagiwara 
I want a new iPhone SE…the Wallet max is 12 cards
Update: one thing I forgot to mention is the Sign in with Apple requirement that goes hand in hand with Background NFC tag reading. The current deadline is June 30.
Update 2: iPhone SE is here
You must be logged in to post a comment.