NFC Enabled Apple Pay

September 9th was an exciting day for NFC enthusiasts and evangelists. Apple announced that iPhone6 would offer Apple Pay, a mobile payment functionality based on NFC (Near Field Communication). The NFC community praised the announcement with relief, “It’s about time.”

The NFC community had hoped that Apple would have adopted NFC for iPhone 5s/5c in 2013. Apple endorsed BLE(Bluetooth Low Energy) instead while continuing to obtain NFC patents. Without Apple’s adoption, NFC has been moving slowly due to the lack of consumer technology awareness. Apple has influenced consumer behavior with an appealing experience and an innovative implementation.  I expect that Apple Pay would help consumers to become familiar with NFC.

Before the announcement, on September 8th, the NFC community had the following questions:

  • Will iPhone6 be NFC-enabled? If it is, what NFC mode will be offered for public use?
  • What type of mobile payment model will be deployed?
  • Will an app development framework be offered?
  • What will be the user experience?

Now, a day after the excitement, the NFC community has more questions:

  • Is iPhone6 capable of reading NFC tags?
  • Can the Softcard (formally ISIS) mobile wallet be used with the iPhone6? What’s the impact to the Softcard?
  • Will the NFC feature be configured on/off in the Setting? What is the default setting?
  • What is the Apple Pay infrastructure?

What are other questions/thoughts in you mind?

ONETOUCHSource: Apple.com

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