Apple Announces New NFC Feature For iPhone: Special Tags That Trigger Apple Pay Purchases When Tapped (9to5mac.com) 53
Apple's VP of Apple Pay, Jennifer Bailey, announced new NFC tags that will let iPhone users make purchases simply by tapping their phones against the stickers, without the need to download a special app first. "The company is partnering with Bird scooters, Bonobos clothing store, and PayByPhone parking meters for the initial rollout," reports 9to5Mac. From the report: Apple also announced that inside the Wallet app, users will soon be able to sign up for loyalty cards in one tap, presumably presented to users as recommendations when they make eligible purchases. Right now, physical Apple Pay transactions require bulky terminals like those you find at retail store checkouts. With the new support, an iPhone will know how to read a specially-encoded NFC tag (that can be as inert as a sticker) and automatically show the Apple Pay purchase interface when a user holds their device near it. No third-party apps or other set up required.
The obvious example is a user can ad-hoc top up their miles on a hired electric scooter simply by tapping their phone or watch to a NFC sticker on the bike. For Bonobos, it will enable simpler self-service shopping with the ability to place NFC tags directly onto clothing rails. The new Apple Pay features will be rolling out later this year, presumably with more partners onboard now that the news is public. This is yet another step towards Apple's goal of replacing the wallet.
The obvious example is a user can ad-hoc top up their miles on a hired electric scooter simply by tapping their phone or watch to a NFC sticker on the bike. For Bonobos, it will enable simpler self-service shopping with the ability to place NFC tags directly onto clothing rails. The new Apple Pay features will be rolling out later this year, presumably with more partners onboard now that the news is public. This is yet another step towards Apple's goal of replacing the wallet.
There's absolutely no way this will be misused (Score:1)
With rogue NFC stickers.
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I'm going to carry a couple in my pockets. So whenever some fat-assed hipster bumps into me on the bus ..... Profit!
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Won't work because they will have a unique serial number that gets paired to the phone. Random tags won't do anything.
It's a shame Apple is only interested in trying to make you buy more shit, instead of opening up the NFC functionality for useful applications like on Android.
Re:There's absolutely no way this will be misused (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure it will work just like every other ApplePay transaction, requiring active approval from the user before completing the transaction.
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Erm. That's not how Apple Pay works -- the user *initiates* and then confirms the transaction.
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Exactly what I was thinking. Geez. My phone sometimes has done very strange things when I pull it out of my pocket - I assume I rested my hand on my leg at some point, and the phone thought...whatever. So, if I have to tap to pay, I'll have to be careful to never trip, never bump into anything, never accidentally tap my phone while in range of something purchasable.
Yeah, that makes total sense. Contactless payment of any kind is wide open to all sorts of accidents and abuse.
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This is said with the confident assurance of someone who has clearly never lived in a place where contactless is common. Contactless is used all the time in Europe -- Apple Pay, other devices, and just contactless credit card payments. I've been using it for years. I've never heard of a single person, nor read a single news article, about it being abused. Theoretical attack modes are a lot less interesting than actual attack modes.
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I suppose the real question is, how easy is it to create an Apple Pay vendor account that could use these, and how quickly can you get money out?
If you could create a vendor account as Sc00ters and get the money out the same day, then exposure is significant. If, on the other hand, creating an account requires background verification and your money is held by Apple for a couple of weeks, fraud would be a lot harder to pull off.
So, there;s absolutely a risk, but one that could be managed at the cost of makin
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> So, there;s absolutely a risk, but one that could be managed at the cost of making the service a bit less desirable to merchants.
How likely do you think that Apple will make the service a bit less desirable to merchants?
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How likely do you think that Apple will make the service a bit less desirable to merchants?
If we're going on the assumption that Apple wants to maximize desirability to merchants at all costs, then the corollary is that Apple wants this service to be useful to merchants.
If the service ends up with a reputation as a conduit for fraud, then no customers will want to use it, and it will be useless to merchants (as well as to everybody else).
Therefore, it's likely that Apple will want to manage risks, because that is also what merchants want.
This has been Explaining The Obvious to Cynics. Have a goo
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It's to compete with AliPay coming out of China.
This ALREADY EXISTS. Except AliPay didn't even bother with RFID tags - they use QR codes (or a QR code like technology).
Scan the QR code with the camera and you can pay the vendor. No hardware at all, other than your phone.
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sounds like a violation of WA and Canadian Law (Score:2)
This sounds expressly forbidden by the Rule of Law, as it is practiced in both Canada and in the State of Washington.
Class action in 3 2 1 ...
Pass oh fucking pass (Score:1)
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And all your transactions are quietly being amassed in a database you have no control over. PASS!
What? Doesn't handing over total control over your rights and ability to engage in any legal monetary transactions to multinational megacorps working together with corrupt government sound like a stellar idea?
What could possibly go wrong? It's not like that sort of power & control would ever be abused by those who are busy trying to scrub anyone voicing wrongthink from having an internet platform in the online public square from which to voice their views, that would be crazy-talk.
Right?
Strat
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Hurray Apple for copying YET AGAIN (Score:2)
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There's something missing here... (Score:2)
> The obvious example is a user can ad-hoc top up their miles on a hired electric scooter simply by tapping their phone or watch to a NFC sticker on the bike.
If you tap an inert sticker to pay, that's fine, but the scooter still needs to know that you paid and that requires the scooter to have an active LTE connection. So, there's no savings in terms of hardware, indeed you have to add an NFC sticker (a few cents). It really does appear to be that you're only saving the opening of an app to scan a QR cod
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I can't speak to scooters, but one of the other use cases cited was paying for parking -- and that is a huge use case, where it definitely improves the user experience -- no need to download an app anymore on first use, and much faster for subsequent use, because the app has quite a lot of friction. It substantially increases the potential market for casual use.
its just a URL right ? (Score:2)
they just refer to a URL and hope the iPhone is online... what happens when the payment gateway is not online or the iPhone is not online ?
Here's hoping... (Score:2)
...that these won't be restricted to just Apple Pay. Otherwise if Google and Samsung and everyone else wants to do something similar (which is likely) then multiple NFC tags will have to be created, one for each payment type. And this will just get confusing and frustrating for customers.
That being said, the 'apple' tags will probably have a higher price tag than the 'google' tags, based on how some websites reprice things based on what device you are using to access their site...