NFC-Based Mobile Payments Said to Be a 'Hallmark' Feature of iPhone 6

[MentalFloss]

A 'Hallmark Feature' pwwaaahahahahahahaahahahahah. After the way Apple slated NFC before and the fans on here slated it (and no doubt will STILL do in this thread) hahahahahaha. Oh how the double standards tables turn in the world of Apple.

If I put garlic on my chocolate pudding, it is likely going to taste like crap. If I put garlic in my pasta, it's possibly going to be great. So do I have a double standard when it comes to garlic?

I guess if I describe how great that garlic tasted on my pasta, you will reply: "pwwaaahahahahahahaahahahahah" or something equally intelligent.

NFC on phones so far has been useless. It will still be useless on Sep 10, no matter what Apple does on Sep 9. If Apple implements NFC in the same way as other phone vendors, then also their implementation will be useless. But if Apple does what I described above - which is different from what all other phone vendors have done so far - then it will be useful. But according to some people, preferring useful applications of a feature over useless ones is a double standard. So be it.

 

[Sonmi451]

Hopefully NFC will pick up more support in the future.

 

[Trapezoid]

If I put garlic on my chocolate pudding, it is likely going to taste like crap. If I put garlic in my pasta, it's possibly going to be great. So do I have a double standard when it comes to garlic?

I guess if I describe how great that garlic tasted on my pasta, you will reply: "pwwaaahahahahahahaahahahahah" or something equally intelligent.

NFC on phones so far has been useless. It will still be useless on Sep 10, no matter what Apple does on Sep 9. If Apple implements NFC in the same way as other phone vendors, then also their implementation will be useless. But if Apple does what I described above - which is different from what all other phone vendors have done so far - then it will be useful. But according to some people, preferring useful applications of a feature over useless ones is a double standard. So be it.

The unintelligent part is him going pwaaahahahahah
because two people said two different things.

 

[Sonmi451]

Agreed, however I'd point out that TouchID has yet to made truly useful - it's as useful right now as NFC has been on my retired Nexus S.

TouchID is very useful. It will be even better with iOS8.

 

[MentalFloss]

Actually, I like the idea of a transaction cap with a tap-to-pay solution (specially if, like you said, there is no other authentication involved, which I personally think will be the case other then the Touch ID). I guess I could go with a NFC solution for small expenses but for bigger ones, I rather go with a chip and PIN.

You consider a PIN to be safer than your fingerprint?

Heck, I'm already worry to loose my phone just because it contain so much personal info (emails, photos, contacts etc). Now it would be like loosing my whole wallet!

A wallet that nobody can use, because they don't have your fingerprint.

Apple's NFC solution will prevent you from losing your wallet. Now if you lose your wallet, you lose your credit card. In the future, your credit card will be at home (if you even still need a physical card), so you can't lose it.

 

[roadbloc]

Talk about not being able to read...

Well try using real words next time.

You have few smartphones with fingerprint readers and all of them suck compared with the iPhone.

Know this for a fact do you? I'm guessing you must have used every single fingerprint capable phone and directly compared it with the iPhone? I'm skeptical. Why are even talking about fingerprint detection? It has NOTHING to do with NFC.

Then, you may have a phone that supports NFC, another phone for iBeacons, another phone that supports this, another phone that supports that...

But there is no other phone that can put every method, APIs, costumer support and a great supported ecosystem behind a perfectly functional touch ID like the iPhone.

Do you even know what NFC is? From your posts I'm kind of getting the vibe that you don't...

 

[V.K.]

I already have a NFC debit card. But with mobile phone payments, you could enter your PIN while waiting in queue, so the payment process is different compared to a card.

I did not know that. I have no experience with using an NFC phone for payment- just credit cards. Is there a transaction limit when you use a phone? also, I imagine that on an iphone you would not have to enter every time and authentication could be done with touch id instead.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Given iPhone's notoriously BAD battery life, you'd best be carrying your credit cards.

It's the reason why I see samsung people hogging up the starbucks plugs trying to charge their phones... or going table to table asking about chargers.

 

[Philsy]

How useful is this when we already have the same facility on modern debit cards?

 

[D.T.]

I'll rephrase it. NFC doesn't currently interest me. Happy?

I was just having a little fun with the word bother, and I even recognize the fact it’s used a little differently in your neck of the woods

TBH, I’m with you at the moment, I don’t have any hands on experience, and haven’t really seen the opportunity to use it (we mostly shop online). If I had a device that offered it, and my frequent points of purchase offered it as an option (like the grocery store for example), I _suspect_ I’d adopt it pretty quickly.

Oh yeah, I’m totally happy, thanks for asking (taking off work early to take our little girl to dance class and eating at one of our favorite local dives that has excellent outdoor seating).

 

[leon44]

McDonald's and most fast food outlets in the UK have NFC terminals, I use them everytime I visit, haven't put a pin into a chip & pin machine in McDs in prob 2yrs now here

I heard from an American friend that they don't even have chip and pin in the US, they still swipe and sign. Nor do they have mobile banking apps etc. Still use cheques

By the sounds of it the US infrastructure needs a lot of work before it's ready for this

 

[dwd3885]

lol

 

[Menel]

I heard from an American friend that they don't even have chip and pin in the US, they still swipe and sign. Nor do they have mobile banking apps etc. Still use cheques

By the sounds of it the US infrastructure needs a lot of work before it's ready for this

We do. Target, Kroger, HomeDepot, etc all have Chip EMV readers.

VISA and partners only issue chip cards with their top premium offerings. I have it, and use it occasionally. Why occasionally? becuase I'm usually using my Debit card which even Chase still won't issue with chip.

The issue is largely the banks.

Major retailers have the infrastructure, the readers.

There are lots of mobile banking apps. Chase, Bank of America, Capital One, many credit unions, etc. etc. I have occasionally sent money to my father electronically from my Chase to his Suntrust.

 

[crsh1976]

TouchID is very useful. It will be even better with iOS8.

Let's give some current examples, please.

iOS 8 is still not out - too easy to say it's going to be better with the next version. The next version is always better.

 

[cdmoore74]

Great! I can eliminate the need for a debit card. If I can carry one less thing in my pocket, I'll be happy.

It will take years for every merchant to get on the same page so don't ditch your cards yet. I still remember fast food chains like Mcdonalds not accepting debit cards when they were used everywhere else. And it still blows my mind that people still write checks out. There are many people that don't trust technology and rightfully so.

 

[Armen]

Given iPhone's notoriously BAD battery life, you'd best be carrying your credit cards.

10 hours is bad battery life? Sounds like you have a iphone 5 with a defective battery.

 

[x5tuu]

I heard from an American friend that they don't even have chip and pin in the US, they still swipe and sign. Nor do they have mobile banking apps etc. Still use cheques

By the sounds of it the US infrastructure needs a lot of work before it's ready for this

I had a chat with a petrol station attendant at a shell garage in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago again, about chip and pin, as I put my card into the reader and he looked baffled and asked what I was doing and why, so I said I was going to use chip and pin...blank look

They infrastructure is there right across the country but remains inactivated in e mass (or so it seems, granted I only spend 12-14wks a year in the USA now)

However as far as banking apps go, the ability to take a pic of a cheque and send it to your bank for cashing is light years ahead of our current antiquated cheque system, although cheque-image cashing is imminent I hear

 

[Analog Kid]

I had a chat with a petrol station attendant at a shell garage in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago again, about chip and pin, as I put my card into the reader and he looked baffled and asked what I was doing and why, so I said I was going to use chip and pin...blank look

Of course the blank look may have been because you said you were buying 'petrol'...

 

[gotluck]

Haha I never thought we'd see the words Apple NFC and hallmark feature in the same sentence

 

[psycosis]

Actually, NFC-capable POS terminals have been around for a long time. Both Visa and Mastercard have tried to push contactless card payments a few years ago (Paywave/Paypass), but it simply didn't catch on.

Personally, I don't see what I would gain by fiddling with my phone rather than just swiping a credit card. Credit cards (not debit cards) also offer the best fraud protection from a consumer perspective, since fraudulent charges can be easily disputed before any of your own money is actually withdrawn.

While RFID (cards use RFID, not NFC, but from the terminals POV, there is no difference) have been in cards for awhile, the terminals had to be put into stores. This required some new hardware and since the same card is needed for swipe or contact less, the gain was only marginal. EMV comes in 2015. This will require new hardware. All stores will get this as it will be needed to accept any credit card. This terminal comes with contact less built in. Now every store will support it. Add Apple marketing and you have a potential hit.

The gain? No longer having to carry the credit card. NFC use of the card offer the same protections as using the contactless portion of the card as well.

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nfc is pointless. give me a useful reason to want nfc.

No longer need to carry credit cards and phone.

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That's the thing though, being available as a payment method and actually being used is two different things.

I haven't a seen a gas station in the US WITHOUT nfc. I've also never seen one person use it ever.

I'd be interested to see how much actual usage it gets outside of the US.

Contactless cards are very popular in Canada. EMV adds time to the checkout process which can cause lines. Stores hate this, so they wanted contactless to speed up the process. Everyone wins with it.

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I think a lot of people don't get yet why this will be different from what they have known as NFC so far. This will probably be the biggest thing since the introduction of the first iPhone.

The way it's going to work if they really partner with Visa: You register your credit card with your iPhone, and then you leave the card at home. When you want to pay something with your phone, you touch your phone to the NFC reader at the checkout. The amount to be paid is displayed on your phone. Then you authorize the payment with your fingerprint. The iPhone then communicates with Visa to get a one-time token for exactly the requested payment, and the token is restricted to the store. That token is then passed to the cashier via the NFC reader, and the store uses the token to get the money from Visa.

Advantage: You never give your credit card or your credit card number to anyone else. Nobody can use the token you provided for their own purchases, because it is limited to a store, to a certain amount and it expires quickly. Think about it: Your credit cards don't belong in other people's hands, they don't belong in your wallets, they belong in a safe place at home. All that people need to pull money off your account is written on the credit card in plain text! Identitity theft is one of the biggest problems credit card owners face nowadays. This will kill identity theft. It will probably even kill the plastic credit card in the long run.

So no, this has nothing to do with NFC like you know it so far. It has nothing to do with NFC credit cards, because all they do is transfer your credit card number to the store via the NFC reader, so it's a slightly faster replacement for swiping, but that's all. NFC on phones so far has been a pointless vanity feature.

So it's a bit silly to say "I don't care about NFC", because this has nothing to do with how NFC is used now. NFC is just a tool, and Apple+Visa might have found the perfect use for that tool.

This exists today and is called tokenization. The problem is that Visa does not approve the amount. There is a third party bank involved. Apple can't make a deal with Visa, they need to make the deal with various banks and that is just for the US.

 

[zipa]

Great! I can eliminate the need for a debit card. If I can carry one less thing in my pocket, I'll be happy.

No, you can't. Well, not for a few more years at least.

 

[Rigby]

The gain? No longer having to carry the credit card.

That doesn't seem much of a gain to me. I have to carry some kind of wallet anyway for things like driver license etc. And in the forseeable future you will have to continue carrying a payment card, since it will take years (if ever) to reach a 100% adoption rate for mobile payments.

NFC use of the card offer the same protections as using the contactless portion of the card as well.

Well, that depends on how it's implemented. If Apple inserts itself as another middleman between the customer and the credit card issuer, there may be additional hassles. Just look at how Paypal freezes accounts and makes you jump through hoops in case of any irregularities before you get your money back.

 

[zipa]

Secure Enclave may make the need for a special sim irrelevant?

It's been on ARM processors for a decade or so, so no, it didn't seem to have any effect on that need.

 

[Oletros]

Still don't need NFC. But do want a mobile payment solution and an eco-system that supports it.

Guess that's where users that prefer Apple products differ from others. Technology for the sake of technology is typically not something they start drooling about.

Can you explain the difference between Apple NFC implementation and the ones already in place?

How one is technology for the sake of technology when it is the same thing?

 

[zipa]

My wife turned her iPhone into a NFC-enabled payment-capable device by the simple means of keeping her NFC-enabled debit card in the back of the phone case.

Not really the same. Actually, it's nowhere near the same.