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NFC-enabled card - so useless for majority of people.
If NFC were more universally adopted at checkout devices, what would be useless is the CHIP and needing to insert, and WAIT, WAIT, WAIT to remove your card. Simply tap and go. It's a far better solution to the chip which gets dirty or worn and then doesn't work. Can't see how NFC would get "worn out".
 
Your point is well taken, but I have to ask: bread every day? Do you demand the freshest possible bread? Or do you just eat alot of bread?
Bread at convenience stores are not "same day fresh". They get deliveries probably once or twice a week. So any bread on the shelf is already "old".
 
I kind of feel bad for Square Reader. But it’s totally useful where it eliminates the adapter. This is just the next step in technology, assuming the card holder has the built-in chip on the credit card.(Which most financial institutions have converted and/or are converting over to).
Square readers are just cheap plastic that anyone can manufacture. Square's services as a bank and POS terminal is their real value. But if Apple introduces Apple Pay Pro for merchants, Jack Dorsey will be begging for his job back at Twitter.
 
This will be so helpful for iPhone owners. Say goodbye to physical credit cards. Never have to worry about losing a credit card.

Is it about time the secret chip is being put to use?

Just worry about losing your iPhone.
 
Tap your iPhone against their pockets.

Steeling money via the NFC is already a thing and has been for a while. It's why they sell those signal blocking wallets for people who live in cities.
My bad, I misunderstood the op, thought they meant tap their card.(It was a long day)
 
If NFC were more universally adopted at checkout devices, what would be useless is the CHIP and needing to insert, and WAIT, WAIT, WAIT to remove your card. Simply tap and go. It's a far better solution to the chip which gets dirty or worn and then doesn't work. Can't see how NFC would get "worn out".
Tap and go, as you described is already prevalent in Europe. We can tap our card, even without user input, for up to 50€. It’s so common that most shops just hold up the reader through the now ever present t Covid screens in front of the cashier. It works through the glass. Obvs it’s not in your country but over here it’s the standard practice
 
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I kind of feel bad for Square Reader. But it’s totally useful where it eliminates the adapter. This is just the next step in technology, assuming the card holder has the built-in chip on the credit card.(Which most financial institutions have converted and/or are converting over to).

Square gives their readers away for free, so now they don't have to pay for making and shipping them, and having more plastic waste filling the world.
 
Your point is well taken, but I have to ask: bread every day? Do you demand the freshest possible bread? Or do you just eat alot of bread?
And this is why traveling is good: you learn new things, find out people in different countries have different customs and don't look like a jerk in the forums of macrumors.com.
 
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It will be so nice and easy with getting money from someone. Smartphones eliminated calculators, photo cameras, flashlights now credit card terminals may be on the way to extinct. I’m waiting for my future iPhone will have electric toothbrush and shaver too.
 
From the little I understand through my research on how to make contactless payment rings, having iPhones accept NFC payments isn't as easy as one may think, mainly for security and liability reasons.

Since the advent of EMV tokenization, skimming is not a threat (ditch those useless "RFID blockers"). Without a verified provider to authenticate tokens, a thief can't really steal money from skimmed data, because it doesn't contain the actual credit card info. They basically get an instance of a public key—without the private key, they can't do anything.

The way to steal from a contactless card (other than obviously physically stealing the card, which is still the easiest) is to find some way to authenticate skimmed tokens. You can try to use a rogue reader from a verified provider (Square, Clover, etc.)—but that's very difficult. These companies obviously keep a tight leash to prevent this from happening. They can cut you off if they notice your account has suspicious activity. To prevent hardware hijack, their readers have hardware measures (tamper sensors/shields around the secure chips/PCBs that wipes the cryptographic keys at the slightest suspicion, bricking the reader) to keep their ecosystem secure.

Apple is already a trusted provider. All of the keys necessary to authenticate a card purchase are stored in the "secure element" T2 chip. They just have to make sure people can't use iPhones to validate skimmed tokens. If they fail, you would need a RFID-blocking wallet.
 
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That makes zero sense. Off course Apple wants you to upgrade to the latest and greatest.

Of course, but I think Apple is also aware that users are on average holding on to their iPhones for longer (trending towards 3-4 years now), and we see their business model shift accordingly. Instead of buying iPhones, Apple supports your devices longer (via software upgrades and battery replacements), while continuing to earn off you in the form of accessories, apps, and services. So Apple is able to continue earning either way.

Something like this is not likely to bring about many upgraders as there are already numerous ways of making payments, and it’s a feature more for businesses, not consumers.
 
Because it would require a Watch OS update – which isn't in the scope of this update. It might be in the future if Apple considers it a useful use case.
I don't think the original post implies watchOS 8.4 might have Watch to Watch payment option enabled, more on a future release sort of thing. But that's just speculation on my end.
 
Small businesses still need software to track sales of SKUs, analytics, reports, etc. So while it may eliminate the need for hardware, I’m guessing there will be an API for vendors like Square, which would actually benefit them since as I understand it, they give away their hardware for free and make money from cc processing fees.
 
Don't be fooled into thinking there are many competitors. Cash App is a Square company (which is itself joined at the hip to Twitter), and Venmo is a PayPal company which in turn owns almost everything else.
Very true. Also Spotify is the top streaming company by a lot. Epic has its own store that takes a percentage. Nothing is black and white, but Apple is always the bad guy, and these companies are always “for the little guys”.
 
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