“Apple is working on its own mobile payments solution, per multiple reports from places like The Wall Street Journal,” Alex Heath reports for Cult of Mac. “Exactly how the company plans to implement such a service remains to be seen. Tim Cook has made it clear that Touch ID was created with mobile payments in mind, which makes sense when you consider that it’s such a secure form of authentication.”
“A new concept called EasyPay takes the Apple approach to mobile payments on the iPhone, and it looks great,” Heath reports. “Interface designer and app developer Ricardo Del Toro recently shared his ideas behind EasyPay on Dribble. Here’s part of what he had to say:”
Ideally, developers would incorporate this system into their apps and enable people to buy physical things, one example would be Amazon. In addition to iOS apps, this functionality could also be available on the web. Keychain is a step in the right direction, but it could be a much better experience. At checkout, the card would slide up and when Touch ID recognizes the correct fingerprint, it would initiate the payment through the iTunes payment system. The other possibility is retail. Implementing this type of experience in a retail environment is a more complex implementation. My idea for the experience of the transaction is this: walk into a coffee shop, or any retail environment and ask for the tab to be placed on EasyPay. EasyPay would send a notification to the iPhone in front of the counter using iBeacon technology and when Touch ID authorizes the payment, the iTunes payment system would direct the requested amount to the retail location. The retail implementation is a fairly complex one with a lot of old infrastructure to consider. I believe the future of mobile is payments. There’s a lot of room for improvement in that area. — Ricardo Del Toro
More details and mockup of an alluring Apple webpage for EasyPay in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
The big problem here is legacy technology, having to conform to the lowest common denominator… something Windows has had to deal with for decades.
Given that Apple likes its walled-garden iOS model and therefore has no profit incentive to set up an industry-wide payment standard, and because iPhones are used by a relatively small percentage of the population, the future of mobile payments actually looks a lot like it does today. Maybe credit card companies will switch over to chip & pin credit cards and the USA will stop minting the absurdly quaint penny, but other than that, hard currency and non-battery-operated digital bank cards are here to stay.
I would suggest something like this for retail:
Touch phone 6 with built in pay pass and iPhone asks for finger, after correct finger it talks back to paypass device at shop and the shop then does all the communication. Because then the iPhone is not required to have Internet connection and all shops that already have paypass can use the new system with no updates.
iTunes seems limiting. I can see multiple credit cards in your passport app. The retail shop calculates an amount and a store identifier and codes it in a QR code on the screen. Passport already has a QR reader. It reads the amount and the ID of the retail location. The purchaser authenticates with the card of choice. At this point either the iPhone sends an authorization via the web to the retailer. Or the iPhone creates a QR code that the retailer reads which includes your ID and card number. This allows for a transaction where the internet is not available or is really slow. The retailer needs minimal equipment. Just an iPad at POS. Using QR codes avoids any chance of hacking as no radio signals are involved.
SnappScan is one of the coolest mobile payments apps available today. I am using it daily. Works perfect. And it’s a lot cheaper than excepting credit card for the merchant. http://www.snapscanapp.com