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Apple Partnering With Sony to Bring Apple Pay to Japan
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Would potentially be pretty sweet to have that here in NYC for the subway/bus. If I didn't have to ever deal with a Metrocard machine again in my life, I'd be happy.
This sounds like a win-win. I'm glad Apple is collaborating rather than holding out for their own system. I agree that it would be a great idea to bring this technology to the U.S. transportation system. Maybe the DoT is holding out for CurrentC. 
I don't think it's support on the iPhone that's hard to implement, it's the adoption by all the devices that receive payments (registers, kiosks, etc). Without that, it's kind of a dead end.
I will say I was pleasantly surprised to come across a beverage vending machine the other day that accepted Apple Pay. Kinda cool, super convenient.
We need an Apple branded world pay solution. The volume would be impressive but the client contact info would see POS Macs.
It requires a special, likely more expensive NFC chip, along with paying Sony royalties.
Unless they make a deal to only pay royalties if the FeliCa part is enabled, figure the odds on Apple taking a profit hit on every phone in the world. Seems more likely they'd make a special version.
My first thought was that they were speaking of being able to use regular NFC, if a store has it, and they set up the back end systems for it.
But I'll be happy to be proved wrong.
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Is FeliCa that much faster than regular contactless? The latter is already pretty fast.
Please build this into the Apple Watch and tell me where I can buy a replacement lock for my home!!! No need for Home Kit, Wi-fi, Bluetooth, a paired iPhone, etc. Just wave the watch and go!! (Or something similar!)
(Emphasis mine.) Possession of Japanese citizenship is not a requirement to obtain and to use a FeliCa-compatible card in Japan (PASMO, Suica, etc.) A foreign tourist can buy a FeliCa-compatible card immediately upon arriving in Japan. I seriously doubt Apple will demand a Japanese passport or other proof of Japanese citizenship as part of iPhone FeliCa activation. (And how would that work anyway? Bring your Japanese passport to an Apple Store in Japan? As it happens, that'd probably be illegal discrimination under Japanese law.)
I think a copy editor needs to take a look at this report and fix it.
Such functionalities and zillions more have been and continue to be, envisioned by many and are all in the realm of future versions of the AW, more specifically non-tethered (stand-alone) versions of the AppleWatch, and once implemented I expect wrist-worn communications devices such as the AW will take off in a big way.
All that's standing in the way as of now are the need for increased miniaturization to allow for more onboard components and radically new battery technology to drive some of the more power-hungry items in that list of necessities.
you obviously don't understand how apple pay it works.
you just need more places to support tap to pay, that's how it works in canada. so many places that don't have 'apple pay' but support tap, that's where you can use apple pay.
stop blaming apple, it's not apple, it's the stores.
Apple needs to take a page out of samsung's book and find away to get the magnetic strip to work with apple pay. Barpay.ing any crazy disappointment from tomorrows event, the Iphone 7 will be my next phone but I'm going to miss the convienence of samsung pay.
Good one, bringing new technologies to Germany, classic.
Sometimes I feel like living in some third world country with our overpriced mobile data plans, low bandwidth DSL connections and basically being cash-country still. You can't even pay with your card in lots of smaller stores and as it took over 10 years for us to adopt card payments on a larger scale, I'm afraid we are far away from doing easy NFC payments at more than a few locations.
How overpriced/low bandwidth are we talking, out of curiosity? In the US I pay $80/month for 200mbps/20mbps cable and $70ish/month for 6GB of LTE data (albeit with data rollover and a significant number of video/music streaming services zero-rated so I effectively don't even come close to that cap).
Don't feel bad, cash is still king in NYC. Going into a small business restaurant or cafe without cash is asking for trouble.
If you need good coverage you need to use Deutsche Telekom.
Some prices at Deutsche Telekom:
Mobile (all with unlimited calls and SMS)
1 GB LTE: 35€/month (no subsidized smartphone!)
3 GB LTE: 45€/month (no subsidized smartphone!)
6 GB LTE: 55€/month (no subsidized smartphone!)
10 GB LTE: 80€/month (no subsidized smartphone!)
Unlimited LTE: 200€/month (with smartphone, not available without)
DSL (in Mbit/s, but unlimited data)
16 / 2.4 = 35€/month (available at like 85% of homes, any lesser bandwidth costs the same)
50 / 10 = 40€/month (available at like 35% of homes)
100 / 40 = 45€/month (available at like 5 to 10% of homes)
200 / 100 = 55€/month (available pretty much nowhere)
DSL pricing of higher bandwidths isn't the real problem, problem is availability. Who cares if the difference between some 16 / 2.4 (or with bad luck even things like 6 / 1) connection and 200 / 100 is only 20€, if you can't get the later?
There are other carriers as well, they are about 5 to 10€/month cheaper, but often doing some "fair use policy" which allows them to shut your bandwidth down to something like 2 Mbit/s after using 100-300 GB of traffic, depending per carrier.
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I would NOT be surprised that the NFC chip on (possibly) as early as the iPhone 7 and 7+ has been upgraded to support the faster FeliCa standard so it would work with JR East Mobile Suica and Rakuten Edy NFC payment systems.
Apple is partnering with Sony to bring its Apple Pay payments service to Japan, reports Japanese news site Nikkei. As has been previously rumored, Apple will make future versions of the iPhone compatible with Sony's FeliCa technology to allow Japanese citizens to use Apple Pay for contactless payments at FeliCa-compatible terminals.
FeliCa is Sony's tap-to-pay format, which has been widely adopted in Japan. It's used to access the country's railway and bus system, and it's able to store e-money that can be used at vending machines, cafes, and other locations equipped with FeliCa systems. FeliCa is able to process transactions in a fraction of a second, making it suitable for use in a fast-paced transit environment.
The new iPhone is expected to be equipped with the technology needed to allow it to interface with FeliCa payment terminals, but according to Nikkei, Apple Pay is not likely to launch until Japan until next year. Instead, a gradual rollout is expected.
Apple still needs to negotiate fees with financial institutions in Japan and establish deals with retailers and service providers that use the FeliCa readers, a process that will take some time.
Apple Pay is currently available in nine countries including the United States, United Kingdom, China, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Hong Kong, France, and Singapore. Apple Pay vice president Jennifer Bailey has said Apple is "working rapidly" to expand the service to additional countries in Asia and Europe.
Article Link: Apple Partnering With Sony to Bring Apple Pay to Japan
I read "Apple Partnering With Sony..." and had a brief hope that Vue would come to the AppleTV... then read the rest.
I think better headline would have been "Apple says, 'Hi FeliCa!'"...
;-)
Apple demands a cut, the stores/bank have cheaper alternatives that work, so it is Apple's fault.
From the banks, not the retailers. And it doesn't look like American banks have too much of a problem with what Apple's demanding--for now, anyway.
Ironically, stuff like Walmart/CVS Pay might actually cost them more money due to running cards as online transactions instead of in-person ones. Unless they try pushing for a CurrentC-like bank transfer thing again, but we saw how that turned out.