Sam OliverCiting two anonymous sources with details on a coming iPhone, The New York Times reported on Monday that a future handset from Apple will include a NFC chip from Qualcomm. That wireless chip could allow a next-generation iPhone to be used to make mobile payments.
Author Nick Bilton said though Apple apparently plans to add the feature to a future iPhone, "it is unclear" which handset it will appear in. Apple typically releases its annual iPhone upgrade in June.
"one person familiar with the new Apple feature said the phone's credit card information would be tied to information currently used on iTunes, which would make it simple for customers to set up the new mobile payment method on the iPhone," the report said.
The report comes soon after a separate story from Forbes, which claimed that Apple plans to bring NFC functionality to the anticipated iPhone 5 this summer. But a separate report last week also claimed that Apple had abandoned its plans to include an NFC chip in the iPhone 5, citing "the lack of a clear standard."
Google's flagship, custom-built Android phone, the Nexus S, was released late last year with an NFC chip for short-range wireless data transmission. However, the feature has failed to attract any major applications thus far.
This January, AppleInsider exclusively reported that Apple was looking to hire a hardware engineer familiar with radio-frequency identification, or RFID, a type of NFC. The company also sought a number of payment platform experts for products in retail stores, inviting applications to be a part of "something big."
Rumors of an NFC-capable iPhone have repeatedly surfaced, fueled in part by last year's hiring of Benjamin Vigier, an expert on NFC technology. Previously, Vigier was the project manager for mobile wallet, payment and NFC at mFoundry, a company that specializes in mobile payments.
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13 Comments
Coming out with an NFC e-wallet is a relatively easy task compared with getting all the merchants in the world to be compatible with it. I would be interested to know how merchants will physically communicate with iPhone NFC handsets. Will Apple be providing merchants hardware that sits next to their cash register?
There have been enough rumors about this that I'm suspending judgement on anything iPhone NFC related until there's some definitive information. This story's run itself ragged.
The only way I see this happening with the iPhone 5 is if there is a decent SW feature for it. I can?t imagine Apple would do what Samsung and Google did with the Nexus S and add a new HW feature that has absolutely no SW that can utilize it out of the box.
Coming out with an NFC e-wallet is a relatively easy task compared with getting all the merchants in the world to be compatible with it. I would be interested to know how merchants are expected to connect to an iPhone NFC system.
It?s simple, it just deducts from your iTunes account. Oh, and Apple takes 30% cut from the top from merchants.
Coming out with an NFC e-wallet is a relatively easy task compared with getting all the merchants in the world to be compatible with it. I would be interested to know how merchants are expected to connect to an iPhone NFC system.
The same way they currently do in Europe
The same way they currently do in Europe
Could you elaborate on that and explain how Apple could use one system to integrate with all the world?s NFC transaction systems in one device?