Carey Kolaja for All Things D:
No retailer will have multiple NFC boxes to take payments from different networks, and the NFC terminals shipping today do little more than just transmit the card number and transaction size. They’re not equipped to automatically accept the complex coupons and offers that make the digital wallet so exciting. On the technology side, carriers are trying one solution, phone manufacturers another, and technology companies yet another. Meanwhile, the consumer is standing at the register thinking “really, how hard is it to pull out my credit card?”
Why would Apple want to step into that mess?
Kolaja has a stake in this – she’s chief of operations for global products and experience at PayPal. But she outlines in extensive detail some of NFC’s shortcomings and challenges, and creates an elegant defense of Apple’s rationale to exclude NFC support from the iPhone 5.
She doesn’t dispute that “digital wallets” are an increasingly important part of 21st century commerce, but that’s an immediate need Apple is attempting to answer with “Passbook” in iOS 6.
The thing about NFC is that it is (or could be, I should say) about way more than digital payments. Sure, that’s what the majority of the marketing and maybe even actual use will be, but there is a lot more NFC-enabled features (data sharing, physical security controls, device pairing, etc). I know working together in the current toxic lawsuit happy environment is hard to do. However, if the device makers and OS vendors don’t want to lose control of this to the carriers, they need to get together and come up with a comprehensive standard. In reality this means Google and Apple working together, so I guess that is unlikely to happen.
What the article says is true in the US, but NFC has been mainstream in Japan for 10 years. With an upcoming app for an NFC equipped Android phone, you can buy items from a vending machine or at a convenience store with a swipe of your phone. You can use your phone to board a train. When you get off at your station, you swipe your phone and it automatically deducts the right amount from your account. It keeps a log of your charges that you can read on your phone, and you can see your history on your phone. Need to recharge your transit balance? It can all be done from within an app.
I’m a die hard Apple user. All three of my computers are macs, and my wife and I have iPhones and we have three iPads. I used to live in Japan, but now live in Portland. If I lived in Japan, I would be dumping it all for Android. Partly because of NFC, and partly because Apple maps in Japan are really really awful.
Luckily I live in the US 🙂
p.s. I do understand that NFC is not catching on everywhere (especially the US), and I’m sure that Apple has something up its sleeve (I’m guessing something related to the Authentec acquisition), but I’m hoping that it gets released sooner than later. I’m really looking forward to a digital wallet.
Another good reason to “make me feel good about my purchase”. Sorry but this is just poor journalism.