My understanding is that Apple themselves have to work with the loyalty card companies themselves and make it so the loyalty cards work. I think this will open it up for other loyalty card providers to enable the function, particularly those not with the USA.
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iOS 11 Will Expand Your iPhone's NFC Capabilities Beyond Apple Pay in Several Ways
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There are only a handful of loyalty cards that can be used within the Apple Pay app. It is ridiculous (and annoying) that we can’t simply add a loyalty card into the Apple Pay wallet. Instead, a 3rd party app like StoCard has to be used.
I use Libre sensors also and I just can't wait for iOS version of the android app.
I went looking for NFC tests and found that...
Apparently the Libre presents as a Type 5 (NFC-V) tag with NDEF info, which means supported iPhones should be able to read it.
There's never any guarantees with Apple, but it looks hopeful.
That's amazing. Btw did you try other solutions such as Blucon? Send me private message if you want more details because it's probably not topic to discuss on public forum.
I think you're way too pessimistic because you are ignoring what's actually happening.
1) Everything is being digitized; e.g., several states are working on digital driver's licenses and once implemented they will all rapidly adopt. As adoption by merchants reaches critical mass, it will make sense for Apple to begin advertising and incentivizing people to use it, and it will become disadvantage for merchants who don't. Apple and industry surveys all point to adoption among merchants exceeding 50% by end of 2017, so merchant adoption is already close to what you think will be the maximum adoption rate.
2) Virtually all new POS systems and all smart phones have NFC technology and it is estimated by next year that over 55% of all POS terminals will have it. Again, why it's estimated that 65% of top 100 retailers will take Apple Pay by end of 2017.
3) Considering need to sign up banks and merchants and create user awareness Apple has had amazing growth in two years and usage is increasing exponentially, e.g., up 500% last year and adding over a million users a month.
4) It is faster and more convenient to use Apple Pay than to fish out a card from a wallet or purse and then go through whatever is required, e.g., Insert and then PIN or signature and wait.
5) Hacks have grown so common that people are fed up with having their info stolen and having to replace cards, etc. Your prediction ignores the hugely attractive privacy and security aspect of Apple Pay.
I'm mostly talking about payments, not the other digitization efforts (which themselves could take quite a while, especially in a country as conservative as the US).
Also, there's a difference between theoretical adoption (how many could support it if it were enabled and accessible to customers) and actual adoption (how many actually have enabled it and made it accessible; I suspect Apple is including the former without accounting for the latter). Restaurants are one example where the latter is much lower than the former simply because they're opting to continue to take cards away. Even if NFC were enabled, would you give your phone to a server? Or get up and go with them just to use a phone to pay for food? I suspect most won't. A fair number of other smaller businesses also make the terminal difficult to impossible for customers to access, even if NFC is enabled.
Meanwhile, others are opting not to enable support at all. For example, didn't Home Depot claim they were going to support Apple Pay? That was a couple of years ago from what I remember and they have yet to do so. I don't think they'll enable it any time soon either seeing as they're currently suing Visa and MC over debit fees. CVS also has finally disabled the NFC reader altogether with their latest software update, not to mention Walmart still absolutely hating Visa/MC and not doing more than is absolutely required. (ASDA meanwhile has enabled it but that's because Visa/MC mandated support in Europe. As long as there's no mandate in the US I doubt Walmart will enable it here.)
Something else to keep in mind is that if it were really simply a merchant adoption issue, Samsung Pay would be used far more than it currently is. (Remember, Samsung Pay works with old terminals by sending magnetic pulses to the magstripe reader.) That seems to indicate to me that demand isn't quite there (yet?) for merchants to conclude that supporting phone payments might be a good thing to spend money/effort on--though I imagine most won't bother to explicitly turn it off if their POS vendor provides it for free without any additional effort on the merchant's part.
BTW people are still using cards even at the places that have been breached. I don't think security is as big of a motivator for Apple Pay as some think, especially due to Americans having no liability for fraudulent charges.
Your arguments are well stated, but you're continuing to ignore what is actually transpiring. It isn't "theoretical" adoption. Industry surveys and Apple's actual data are clearly stated actual adoption and usage. You are also ignoring what is actually happening in mobile POS at restaurants, stores, etc. They are all moving away from a fixed register that you have to stand in line for or the server go back to use. It's a much better experience, and much more efficient to have the person assisting you have a mobile device that can take your order and your payment.
I suspect you are also focusing too much on your anecdotal observations instead of what's happening in industries and sectors at large as they are motivated to enhance customer experience and lower costs. To illustrate, you reference taking a customer's card away, or taking a phone away, but mobile POS is exploding in retail, restaurants, bars, etc.., as the benefits are so significant and as the cost declines.
Finally, this is a three legged stool. First, Apple needed to get the banks on board. They have cracked that nut, especially in the US. Next they needed to get merchants on board. They are finally reaching critical mass with large increases, including on-line, the final leg is increasing consumer awareness as most people who have iPhones, etc., don't understand about Apple Pay, how easy it is to set up and use and it's benefits. It didn't make sense for Apple to spend heavily on pushing Apple Pay awareness without the banks and merchants on board, otherwise people would simply be frustrated as they found out their bank card wasn't part of the program or there weren't any merchants who accepted it. That is no longer the case.
NFC pairing is really one of those things that iOS should have supported as soon as apple added NFC to their devices. It's completely analogous to their company motto of "it just works", which they sadly don't follow very well even themselves.
It's bizarre that they still don't appear to support this aspect of NFC, even though they've opened up the NFC reader for other uses than apple pay.
Do you need proprietary apple NFC tags to put on your wares, or will it read whatever open/ubiqutous standard tags are already out there? I watched the keynote presentation when the feature was revealed, but I didn't feel it was well explained exactly what kind of tags it would work with.
Kinda like QC codes - other phones have been able to scan them for years and years, apple stubbornly refused - for whatever nebulous reason I never saw explicitly stated. Sure, you could use a QC scanning app, but WHY? So clunky; so fiddly. Why can't it just work?
Maybe things around me have been pretty progressive but:
- Many restaurants around me accept digital payments; instead of using a single POS, the waiters have mobile terminals/iPods/iPhones in their aprons or back pockets to run cards / scan phones.
- Along with the above point, the majority of these are smaller businesses who aren't bound by the constraints of corporation's resistance to technology. In fact, I've found adoption of NFC around me to be far more rapid among small businesses (retail, resturants, gas) than big box stores.
My guess is that it because most readers support NFC and the mandate to upgrade pushed it into their laps, but adoption has been more rapid than I expected.
So in that future wherever you go you can't take pictures.
You can't comfortably see a video that was sent to you.
You can't read the news properly.
You can't type down things on a whim. Type, not dictate.
You can't play a videogame.
Sounds good.
And by good I mean, sounds worse than the present.
No thanks.
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I mean, it says right there in the article that among other reasons, it's an anti-counterfeiting thing, you just chose not to read and instead rush to make a reply and sound smart.
Isn’t this kind of what iBeacons was supposed to be?
Apple at WWDC 2017 last month introduced Core NFC, a new iOS 11 framework that enables apps to detect Near Field Communication tags.
Similar to Apple Pay, iPhone users are prompted with a "Ready to Scan" dialog box. After holding the iPhone near an item with an NFC tag, a checkmark displays on screen if a product is detected. An app with Core NFC could then provide users with information about that product contained within the tag.
A customer shopping at a grocery store could hold an iPhone near a box of crackers, for example, and receive detailed information about their nutritional values, price history, recipe ideas, and so forth. Or, at a museum, a visitor could hold an iPhone near an exhibit to receive detailed information about it.
Core NFC will expand the iPhone's NFC chip capabilities beyond simply Apple Pay in several other ways.
A bottle of wine with an NFC tag similar to CapSeal
Cybersecurity company WISeKey, for example, today announced that its CapSeal smart tag will now support iPhone thanks to Core NFC. CapSeal smart tags are primarily used for authentication, tracking, and anti-counterfeiting on products like wine bottles. Many other companies offer similar solutions.Core NFC is currently supported by the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and the framework is read-only for NFC tags of types 1 through 5 that contain data in the NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF).
Developers interested in learning more can read Apple's documentation or watch the Introducing Core NFC session from WWDC 2017.
Article Link: iOS 11 Will Expand Your iPhone's NFC Capabilities Beyond Apple Pay in Several Ways
Does it work for Apple Watch as well? I never tried. It wouldn't make sense though, since you don't have touchID there and you'd have to enter the pin or pay automatically (very dangerous)
Right, on the Watch you first have to double-click the side button to enable Apple Pay.
Yes I do it all the time, super convenient
By the way, Apple Watch has NFC but is not available to developers. I wonder if it will be in future hardware versions.
Yes I do it all the time, super convenient
By the way, Apple Watch has NFC but is not available to developers. I wonder if it will be in future hardware versions.
Oh, that's a good point.
If you have Apple Pay enabled, the Apple Watch automatically PIN passcode locks if you remove it from your wrist (make sure wrist detection is enabled).
You can even have it erase the watch after 10 failed PIN attempts just like your phone.
This just shows how misinformed some Apple fans are in this walled garden. So many devices nowadays use NFC for pairing with Android phones (for example, photo cameras, wireless speakers, medical devices like blood pressure monitors etc.) not to mention phone to phone pairing. iPhone owners on the other hand still live in 20th century in this regard.
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Aren't all Apple proprietary solutions (and those which might not event be proprietary per se but are just for some reason preferred by Apple without wide industry adoption) fail sooner rather than later?
All too often Apple seemingly uses non-standard solutions for the sake of being able to claim that their products are somehow superior because they use the solutions nobody else does. In a few occasions that might be the case, however in most cases it is not. It's just different, incompatible with the broader world and thus inconvenient. When it becomes too obvious Apple then adopts a standard solution. The end result being that Apple followers in many regards are forced to use outdated/inferior solutions for years.
I think the original post was along the lines of don't put all of your eggs in one basket.
Hmm. Only 65% of the top 100 isn't that great, and just being able to take NFC payments doesn't tell us how much they're used at those places.
For instance, Apple Pay at Starbucks only accounts for about 0.5% of payments.
Large percentage increases speak more about how low it was before. As for adding users, heck Android Wallet was adding 1.6 million users a month last August.
The problem is that, at least in the US, all those new users don't translate very well into constant users. If the rest of the world exhibits the same 5% user rate as the US, then of the 1 million newly registered Apple Pay users a month, only about 50,000 actually go on to use it more than a few times.
The latest surveys show that over half of Apple Pay users think the convenience is about the same as using a card.
The latest surveys also show that over 60% of Apple Pay users think the security is about the same as with cards.
Clearly there's still a lot of education to be done!
Be careful with studies like the one about Starbucks as they are using a subset of consumers who volunteered their data. While that data showed a strong increase of 50%, Apple's reported 500% increase is because
" it is talking about the actual number of transactions made, while the data analytics firm is referencing the percentage of transactions from its panel of consumers who provide their credit and debit card data and whose banks distinguish Apple Pay transactions."
Nonetheless, even though the technology has moved beyond a nascent state, it still is at an early stage. You are, however, downplaying the inexorable growth in moving into new countries, signing up banks, merchant adoption and consumer usage, as well as the overall move to digitalization and careless and contactless interactions in retail and other venues, like transit. Just for one example, here's an early Apple Pay partner, Subway, with over 26K locations in the US and 45K worldwide, announcing another major step toward that vision.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/17/subway-kiosks-apple-pay/
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/17/subway-kiosks-apple-pay/