Assuming they meet the regulatory requirements to operate as a bank in each region they want to operate and pay Apple the appropriate technology licensing fees, sure.
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Apple Opening Up iPhone's NFC Chip to Third-Party Developers in iOS 18.1
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Moves like this may eventually make Walmart regret special ordering custom payment terminals just to get them without contactless hardware.
The banks do pay a fee for apple pay. I believe this move is intended to discourage banks from discontinuing support for apple pay to save fees and discourage others from requesting access to the iphone’s nfc.
After reading this article it seems to me that the nfc and secure enclave go hand in hand with each other and one can’t be opened up without opening up the other too. This would explain apple’s spirited refusal for years.
Which I believe is why they’re charging for access to the nfc. The only reason for banks to pull out of apple pay in favor of their own wallet app would be to save apple’s fees, but if they’ll now be paying fees anyway then it makes less sense for them to discontinue their apple pay support.
If Apple charges for access to the iphone’s nfc, as the article says, then it makes less sense for banks to pull out of apple pay unless they want to go back to physical cards only as they were until 2014. They won’t save any money anymore by switching to their app instead of apple pay.
Perhaps. Still, many banks were reluctant to join apple pay because of that fee (BBVA in Spain, for instance, waited years to join, their branch in Mexico still hasn’t joined) and many are concerned that opening up the nfc could mean those banks and maybe others pull out of it. Charging for access to the iphone’s nfc discourages that behavior since they won’t be saving any money anyway.
Least of all if they also have to pay a fee for their own app to use the iphone’s nfc.
But if apple will now also charge them a fee for their apps to use the iphone’s nfc then they’re no longer saving any money by pulling out of apple pay. The only way they’d save now is to eliminate mobile payments altogether and stick to physical cards only.
They didn’t to that. Their pinpads do have the contactless hardware, they just turned it off via software. I wish the manufacturers of card readers stopped including in them the ability to turn on/off the nfc at will, just like they don’t allow it for the chip and stripe.
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Nothing is free. Apple provides a convenient service with Apple Pay and that service cost money to maintain so they have to charge companies a 5% fee to use that service. Apple is not crazy profiting off of Apple Pay service to companies. Wish Walmart would understand that. I think Visa and Mastercard charge Walmart a 2% fee to use there chip card service. Either way Walmart is paying some kind of card processing fee so in the end even if they don’t offer Apple Pay, they are still paying a fee
NFC for payments is tied to secure enclave. NFC has been open for use and access for years.
I would hope they would answer yes to all of the above. Would sure beat having to scan each other's QR codes.
I’ve been tapping my phone to pay for the commuter light rail for years, and now the office has nfc for door access where my phone can stay in my pocket to unlock the doors.
I sort of wish Apple had worked to do more to integrate more banks/credit cards into the Wallet like the Apple Card.
Though I don’t know if that is an Apple issue or just a problem with how backwards and out dated the US financial services tend to be. Chip card tech is technically older than I am and only really became big in the USA within the last 10 years and contactless has been around a long time as well and only got pushed durning covid.
I know a nos of you are not fans of monopolies.
Yet, I really don’t like to install different mechant apps to store different passes and event tickets. Some of the bank apps are huge too!
On the other hand, there must some barrier or frictions hindering the incorporation of bank cards into wallet, maybe Apple is too heavy hand on sub-charges.
Apps should utilise the os facilities as much as possible, rather than building their own, which at the end imply too much hassle to users and holding up storage space.
One example is the authenticator. iOS implements its own authentication, yet a nos of apps require users install 3rd authentication app, Google, Norton, etc. it does not make sense at all.
As someone who does a lot of work for our local transit agency, I hear you! This should finally allow more transit agencies to use tap to pay rather than QR codes.
Agreed. The “walled garden” has always been what attracted me to Apple. I think the end of an era has begun. Indeed, everything in life is a trade-off.
Oh, you betcha this will happen. We can thank the EU for this trash.
What do you mean by companies? Apple only charges the banks/card issuers a fee, not the merchants, the fee being 0.15% not 5%. And Walmart obviously has some reason to reject Apple Pay and contactless other than saving any money worth of fees, which as you said they’re not saving anyway; that’s a widespread myth about the fees being the reason why walmart rejects apple pay/contactless.
Furthermore, if a service costs money to maintain then why isn’t Google charging anyone for accessing the nfc on android devices? because they’re not charging for that. It’s always been open to everyone and free. Apple is just being excessively greedy.
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It doesn’t make sense anymore for banks to do that. It might have made sense before if they thought they’d save apple’s fee by pulling out of apple pay in favor of pushing their own nfc payments app, but now it’s clear that’s not the case as apple will charge them a fee anyway.
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