Now that WWDC23 has come and gone, it’s time to take stock of what’s changed, and what’s not, for all things iOS 17 Apple Pay and Wallet. On the surface nothing much appears to have changed. Despite some lame last minute Wallet predictions from Mark Gurman, nothing much has changed in the iOS 17 Wallet UI, only a few modest tweaks for the iOS 17 life cycle. But just like iOS 15 Wallet, the fun stuff that tells us what’s happening and how it will play out over the digital wallet landscape in the years to come is hiding below the surface.
One of the things nobody has noticed or pointed out is the interesting connection with the iOS 17 compatible device list and the embedded secure element (eSE). Let’s take a look.
The power reserve secure element iPhone difference
iOS 17 clears out the last of what I call embedded secure element v1 iPhone models, iPhone 8 and iPhone X, that do not support Power Reserve. The importance of Power Reserve eSE v2 cannot be overstated: eSE v2 handles Apple Pay transaction process completely independent of iOS. This is why iOS can power down into power reserve mode and let eSE v2 continue to handle Express Mode transactions. iOS 17 code no longer has to babysit the whole Apple Pay and Secure Element transaction process that previous iOS versions had to do for eSE v1 iPhones.
With these legacy devices cleared out, we are left with eSE v2 iPhone models. What can iOS 17 do without all that legacy eSE v1 support cruft? A lot evidently, the old 16 Wallet card limit is gone, blown to bits. The sky is the limit, actually the eSE memory is the limit and that’s a lot because iOS 17 beta users are adding way more than 16 Wallet cards, even more than 40. Card and payments ‘otaku‘ in Japan are rejoicing of course but why is Apple doing this? What’s the point?
Wallet needs secure element space obviously because Apple’s long term strategy has lined up big end user services encompassing payment cards, transit cards, digital keys for home, office and hotels, driver’s licenses and eventually all kinds of IDs including passports. Apple has also lined up merchant side services: Tap to Pay on iPhone, and now Tap to Present ID on iPhone. More on those in a bit. All of these services need eSE space. But there’s more: when iOS 17 beta 1 eSE memory becomes full and the user tries to add a new card, Wallet presents a new screen that displays a list of installed cards, how much memory they consume and the option to swipe delete cards:
If people are looking for evidence that Apple is preparing iOS for EU regulatory purgatory, this is it. Letting customers deal with an overcrowded eSE instead of iOS taking care of everything is…very un-Apple like. Let’s face it, who the heck knows or cares what a Secure Element is?
Apple has cleared the eSE deck for mandated ‘open NFC’ (which really means open eSE) regulation. Apple has an iOS that no longer has to manage and police eSE transactions, if so forced iOS 17 can step aside. Side loaded apps and similar can load whatever eSE applets they want and do their own thing. If they stomp on somebody else’s eSE applets and create mayhem at the payment terminal, well that’s the price of government regulations that remove Apple as eSE gatekeeper. Let users deal with the mess of managing which cards can be safely loaded into the eSE. Dear EU iPhone user…welcome to the Android NFC experience.
Multi-device provisioning
Thanks to the streamlined, modern eSE v2, iOS 17 Wallet has an important tweak: multi-device provisioning. All the other ‘new’ iOS 17 Wallet features simply build off of what’s already there and are currently limited to the USA only Apple Card and Apple Cash. Multi-device provisioning is for everybody and will make the Wallet user experience much easier, though most people will never know why. One of the easiest ways to see it in action is that Wallet Previous Cards will display any cards that are on one device but not the other. The Previous Cards Wallet screenshot above shows the transit cards (Suica, PASMO) and e-Money card (WAON) on Apple Watch but not on iPhone.
Stored value cards keep the value on the card itself and can only exist on a single device. This has been caused a lot of confusion over the years for Apple Pay Suica users who assume that all cards work like credit cards and be on all devices. Users panicked when they upgraded to a new iPhone but Setup Assistant didn’t transfer Suica: pre-iOS 17 Setup Assistant only transferred credit cards. Thanks to iOS 17 multi-device provision powered Setup Assistant, everything transfers seamlessly, credit cards, transit cards, keys, ID, etc., so that you don’t have to. Manually moving transit cards in Wallet is much simpler too as users don’t have to remove cards from the previous device anymore.
Features like multi-device provisioning that make Apple Pay and Wallet so easy to use, are very hard to do. It is the greater sum of the parts that will keep customers, and developers too, choosing to stay with Apple as gatekeeper no matter how many rules the EU masters dictate because nobody else offers the same level of integration across devices.
The greater sum of parts will keep growing. Tap to Present ID showcases how Apple continually builds and integrates new services into a compelling whole. A slow burn focus thing. First we got ID in Wallet that was almost useless: Present your license or ID at a TSA checkpoint (do they really exist?). The first real use case arrived with iOS 16 ‘Share your license or ID in an app’ for in-app ID verification. And now we have iOS 17 Tap to Present ID which can transform any iOS 17 eSE v2 iPhone into a cheap payment and ID verification terminal. This combo has a lot of potential, if government ID issuing agencies get their act together, and other government agencies don’t get in the way.
Take Japan’s My Number ID (Individual Number Card) for example. The digital version finally launched on Android in May, after significant delays, but there are significant problems with the whole My Number ID card system. At the same time a different branch of the Japanese government wants to mandate open app stores. When Tim Cook met up with Japanese Prime Minister Kishida at the end of Apple’s Japanese charm offensive tour this past December, Tim gently waffled on committing to support My Number ID in Wallet due to unspecified ‘privacy concerns’. As in ‘you can forgot about privacy, security and My Number ID in Wallet if your government mandates side loading apps’.
Unveiling Tap to Present ID on iPhone now, well before the service actually launches ‘later this year’, works as a defense strategy against such government attempts to recklessly remove Apple as gatekeeper of their own devices. iPhone customers won’t trust using a digital ID unless they can be assured that Apple is playing gatekeeper. No Apple gatekeeper, no digital ID for the rest of us, it’s that simple. It all comes down to privacy and trust.
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