After years of reports saying that NFC is coming to the iPhone for mobile payments, it looks like it will finally be a reality on September 9th.
Part leaks have indicated that Apple’s next-gen iPhone hardware will indeed be equipped with NFC to make transactions for physical goods at brick and mortar stores. Now Apple has struck a partnership with American Express, Visa and MasterCard to support mobile payments in the iPhone 6, according to new reports.
“Apple has reached an agreement with American Express to work together on its new iPhone payments system,” reports Recode. Bloomberg adds that Visa and MasterCard have been brought on board as well.
Credit card companies are already on board with using NFC to handle wireless payments. Mastercard Paypass and Visa Paywave allow customers to wave their NFC-equipped Android phones to pay for goods. It’s up to individual merchants to support the technology, which will be another hurdle for Apple to overcome to get its mobile payments offering off the ground.
Last week, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber suggested the following scenario: “NFC and a new secure enclave where you can store your credit cards, so you can pay for things at brick and mortar retail stores just by taking out your iPhone, but only if it’s one of the new iPhones.” He also posited that mobile payments could be baked into the iWatch.
Apple already has a secure enclave for storing Touch ID fingerprints in the iPhone 5s, and Tim Cook has said that authenticating e-commerce transactions was one of the driving reasons behind creating Touch ID.
