“Apple is likely to incorporate a Near Field Communication (NFC) payment function in the next generation iPhone and has reached an agreement with China UnionPay on a mobile payment service, according to a source close to the matter,” Frank Hill reports for BrightWire.
“Under the deal with China UnionPay, users would be able to download the bank card organization’s app to Passbook in their iPhones and make mobile payments on over 3 million China UnionPay’s ‘QuickPass’ POS machines in China, the source said,” Hill reports. “In addition to NFC payment, the two companies will also work together on another mobile payment solution that can be used for purchases in Apple Stores, added the source.”
Hill reports, “China UnionPay is the only domestic bank card organization and interbank network in China. The company’s network links ATMs across a number of Chinese banks, including fourteen major banks.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz,” “Lynn Weiler,” and “James P.” for the heads up.]
Related article:
KGI Securities Kuo: Apple to include NFC in iPhone and iWatch – April 11, 2014
Mobile e-payments via NFC not ready for prime time until Apple says it is – July 18, 2012
NOT!
The yearly Chinese “next iPhone will have NFC” rumour came slightly late this year, last year it was March.
At least they are including a plausible rationale in this rumor cycle. China is an important and growing market for Apple/iOS. Unlike the U.S., China apparently has the infrastructure in place to make an NFC system work. That does not mean that the rumor is true. But it makes it more interesting as a topic of discussion while we are waiting on the iPhone 6 and the “next big thing.”
Long in the making
UnionPay sounds a lot like Canada’s Interac. Canada has had a unified interbank POS electronic purchase system for 25-30 years now.
Unlikely. Apple identifies technologies early. They are surely working on payment schemes, just not based on Near-field communication.
Maybe for a China version phone only.
Apple has already put their weight behind a different technology that can be used for much, much more than just payments: Low Power Bluetooth (or, more properly, Bluetooth Low Energy [BLE]). This is the technology Apple is using to do iBeacon. It very easily can be extended to payment systems and a lot of other uses. Why would Apple include another technology requiring another RF front end and compatible antenna when BLE can already do what they need and may need for the foreseeable future?
Apple adding NFC does not make sense.Could it happen? Yes. However, I’ll be extremely surprised if Apple adds NFC to any iPhone or iPad.
The only reason I can think of that merchants wouldn’t jump on lower power Bluetooth enabled iBeacons for payment systems is the obvious one … they don’t have low power BT systems already installed, and their current POS systems use an operating system that won’t support it … namely Windows NT.
While installing and implementing lower power BT iBeacons sounds inexpensive and easy, upgrading major hardware components in order to implement is not.
I love that Apple loves to innovate, and think differently, but sometimes that limits where their innovations can, and will be used.
Similarly, a very tiny fraction of the POS systems support NFC. If you as a retailer feel you must move to some type of non contact purchasing system, moving to a more pervasive and more capable standard only makes sense.
This is baloney. NFC is dead as a payment mechanism because nobody wants to pay for the readers among other things. Even Google has decoupled the money losing Google Wallet from NFC.
I agree that NFC is insecure, out of date and basically arcane, but dead it is not. There are way too many merchants that have already bought into the system for it to be dead. And while iPhone users tend to be costumers with lots of disposable income, and are the favored consumer most merchants are looking for, the merchants also know that we’ll pull our wallets our of back pockets to swipe a card, if we can’t wave our iPhones over our heads to pay.
If Walmart were to install the first iBeacon wireless payment system … I still wouldn’t use it, since I don’t shop there. And if Macy’s never installs an iBeacon system, I’ll still swipe my card there. I don’t see an iPhone enabled payment system being a reason for people to switch their shopping experiences, so what is the incentive to implement something over that the NFC they already have installed?
I would guess because it is an integral part of a system that does so much more and that the bigger businesses at least will desire to invest in. Smaller businesses have far less of an inclination but then Apple probably isn’t that interested in ultimate coverage just the major retailers and other organisations of acceptable size like health, fitness, hotels, airports and Govt agencies.
I think you missed the previous point … iPhone users are not sitting at home not spending their money just because “we can’t wave our iPhones over our heads to pay.” They’re out there swiping cards already, spending a LOT of money, and not just at the Apple store. If you’ve already got them coming into your store to swipe their cards, why do you need to invest in a new system, which would probably require more than just installing a few cheap iBeacons, so “we can wave our iPhones over their heads to pay”?
And you do realize that smaller shops are more likely to adapt first. Most small shops that I go in, are using iPads as registers, iBeacons is already installed in the iPads, they just need the implementation from Square or someone to use it. Big box retailers are going to be less likely to use it, because most are already invested in big touch screen systems that run Windows NT as their OS – they’d need to swap out the entire system at thousands of stores and get it to talk to their corporate HQ correctly in order to implement.
At some point Apple needs to stop bucking trends and follow some. Like it or not, NFC is being used some in North America, but it is widely used / used daily in places like Asia. At some point, a billion Chinese might get tired of carrying multiple mag cards and just start buying a phone that lets them only carry that – and that might be a Droid if Apple keeps thinking different …
Nope.
There are millions of phone users in China using built in or stick on NFC to pay for bus, metro, taxi, food etc. But there is small problem (or is it), you use Hong Kong Octopus card to take bus>metro to Shenzhen to use Shenzhen Tong card to do the same. Then take the bullet train to Guangzhou to use your 3rd NFC card to get around. I have 6 of those transportation cards.
… In related news, Apple is rumored to be re-introducing the serial and parallel ports in its next generation Mac Pro.
I see this coming, esp for Japan, railway,shopping marts,bus,etc., it is everywhere in japan