I have to admit I’m a little confused about the brouhaha over the latest Mark Gurman rumor: “Apple is planning a new service that will let businesses accept payments directly on their iPhones without any extra hardware.”
Okay, so what are we talking here? Oh, Apple is adding new Core NFC functions that let any 3rd party app be a POS software backend!
I doubt it.
Maybe PassKit NFC Certificates are going away! Look EU, look Australia…our NFC is open open for business! Anybody can use iPhone now as payment terminal! Anybody with an iPhone can skim payments cards in the wild!
Are you kidding?
You see there is this little thing called EMV c-e-r-t-i-f-i-c-a-t-i-o-n for all payment terminal hardware and separate certification for VISA, Mastercard, etc. Do people really think Apple is going to give those away for free along with a bundled POS app for payment transactions? Think again.
Look, there are a ton of certified cheap Android based NFC-QR-whatchamacallit all-in-one reader devices out there that suck. They’re only as good as network connection, the OS and the POS app + payment transaction backend. Apple isn’t going to compete with that.
I don’t know about anybody else but I’m way more interested in how Apple would pull off the business software end of this rumor because the hardware end is already a given. And it would never see the light of day in FeliCa land Japan, not unless Apple cuts another deal with FeliCa Networks that is. Success in America is not guaranteed either. Just ask the App Clips team.
You must be logged in to post a comment.