One of the big trends at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has been announcements regarding NFC. While NFC has been supported in a handful of Android phones and BlackBerry models, till now there haven’t been many real-world applications for it. With several announcements around NFC, the technology’s time may be finally be coming.
Despite rumors, Apple has never shown an interest in adopting NFC in the iPhone or iPad. Could Apple’s lack of NFC support could stick out like a sore thumb despite the fact that it managed to upstage every company at MWC with yesterday’s iPad 3 event announcement.
The idea of NFC as the basis for a smartphone-based digital wallet has been floating around the tech world for a while now but has never materialized as a mainstream product. One reason for that is that NFC as a piece of hardware and short range communications protocol is only part of the e-wallet equation.
Creating an e-wallet and mobile payment solution requires a lot more than NFC chips being included in mobile devices along with NFC support in mobile OSes. It also requires buy-in from and integration with banking and credit card companies, reader devices from merchant processing firms, and it requires that retailers upgrade their various electronic payment readers to support NFC.
That’s a lot of stars that need to align for NFC to have a chance of widespread implementation. Till now there have been a number of small, typically local, test initiatives by finance companies, but no wide scale or global initiatives. That may be one reason Apple has been pretty quiet on the NFC front. The company might be waiting for there to be signs that the technology had matured into a viable product.
With several NFC announcements at MWC, that time may be coming with more trials in the U.S. and some global partnerships forming to support and promote the technology around the world. Here’s a sample of the announcements that came flooding out of Barcelona earlier this week:
- Three Big Plastic Issuers Take Step Toward Mobile Wallets
- VeriFone announces NFC POS solution for mobile network operators
- Visa Announces Mobile Payments Provisioning Service
- Santander unveils first NFC wallet to offer both Visa and MasterCard payments
- Intel and Visa Join Forces to Boost Mobile Payments
- LG unveils two more NFC phones
It’s also worth noting that NFC isn’t limited to mobile payments. The short range technology has other applications including digital flyers, the ability to exchange information between devices, and even the ability to serve as a digital key to a device (something Apple was once rumored to be exploring for future Macs and iOS devices).
Some of these features extend the functionality of NFC beyond smartphones to other devices like tablets, computers, and home and office electronics. While the e-wallet scenario might not seem like a huge miss on Apple’s part given the timing of the iPhone 4S launch, but not including some NFC support in the iPad 3 or in iOS 5 (or 5.1) might be a different story. On the other hand, this does offer third-party vendors a chance to innovate around both the iPhone like DeviceFidelity is doing with its In2Pay iCaisse4, which has been certified for mobile payments by MasterCard.
Ryan Faas is a technology journalist and consultant living in upstate New York who has written extensively about Apple, business and enterprise IT, and the mobile industry. In addition to writing for Cult of Mac, he is a contributor to Computerworld, InformIT, and Peachpit Press. In a previous existence he was a healthcare IT director as well as a systems and network administrator. Follow Ryan on Twitter and Google +.
13 responses to “Is Apple Missing The Boat On NFC?”
“Despite rumors, Apple has never shown an interest in adopting NFC in the iPhone or iPad. …”
This is ridiculous. Apple has many patents both software and hardware around the implementation of NFC and has been researching it for years.
It’s good for Apple to support the National Football Conference!
am I missing something here?
Depending on the type of technology, Apple waits until the tech is more tested and mature, less expensive, and in widespread use before incorporating support of it into their products. All one has to do is look at previous iPhones for examples. Original iPhone didn’t have 3G. iPhone 4 didn’t have HSPA+. 4S doesn’t have LTE. No iPhone has yet to have inductive charging, a larger screen, or more/different ports than just the dock connector.
Other non-iPhone examples include OLED, USB 3, eSATA, Bluetooth 3.0, 3D, and Blu-ray.
In other words, I don’t see Apple incorporating NFC until there’s a standard that all (or at least most) credit card companies and merchants are committed to, is everywhere, is proven to be secure (see recent news of Google’s shame), and has little to no meaningful ding on power efficiency. They don’t always like to be the guinea pig. And right now, NFC is just another silly marketing buzzword.
You don’t know what the next iPhone will have in it, so why do you say that Apple is missing the boat. From what I’ve read, in the U.S. NFC isn’t really all that popular, but if Apple does put it in the next iPhone, it’s been claimed that will jump-start the use of NFC. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but we’ll just have to wait and see. I believe the Galaxy Nexus has an NFC chip but I’ve never heard mention of it having widespread use by consumers.
I’ve heard some people say that Apple also missed the boat on 4G-LTE, but it really hasn’t taken off to the degree that some think it has. I believe some carriers said there was only about a 4% cellphone user penetration in the U.S. Apple really isn’t that far behind the curve for NFC or 4G-LTE. Apple may be behind in a place like Japan since they’ve likely used NFC or something similar (FeLiCa/Osaifu) for years.
NFC won’t take off until it’s in the iPhone.
What is so great about my phone having nfc? Most retailers that have those “tap to pay” systems tell me they don’t work with their system anyways. Until the infrastructure is there, who cares? Maybe in the future, but its to early, at least in America.
Let’s give Apple a chance to keep our photos and contacts from being lifted before we start putting our entire wallet in the phones. I’d like to know what sort of liability phone vendors have when they add NFC to the phones. PCI compliance for retailers is a pain, will there be something similar to PCI on the phone maker’s side?
interesting timing as today CBS-SF is airing a report of how a malware app on Android phones can use the NFC technology to scan the RFID chips on the credit cards in your wallet and send it to a server.
They wouldn’t have any. It’s completely your decision if you want an e-wallet.
It’s not that popular. Chip and Pin is basically non existent around here. The banks and shops haven’t really even hinted they are interested in a mass roll out.
And as has been noted, NFC has had some security issues lately so that would be a factor in Apple not yet ready to roll on it. I think when they are they will have a partner that will be rolling it out as well. So we’ll see both sides of the equation present. Say perhaps fellow (RED) support Gap Inc. Even if they just did it for their internal cards that would be potentially huge. Maybe also some of the major city MTA systems. I use a tap card already that is tucked between my iPhone and a slim case. Having the card ‘on’ my iPhone would work even better, especially if I could transfer ‘the card’ to another phone if that one was lost or stolen (and my physical tap with it in this case)
I agree. Like you said merchant implementation will ramp up in a hurry once Apple jumps on board and using it as a digital key means they don’t have to sit around waiting.
I won’t be surprised if it shows up or surprised if it doesn’t. It’s more than just a buzzword though.
DO NOT WANT.
I speculate that NFC might well be unnecessary and undermined by the work of Square payment, especially with their point of payment system gaining traction. Square is mostly just a piece of software that can work on any phone they developed for, where as NFC needs to be a physical part of the phone itself.