Apple is preparing to open up the iPhone’s NFC chip so that any app can access it. The pressure and the laws of the European Union decide again. Sounds like a very bad idea to me. It might not be the most popular opinion, however I have good reasons for this. The most important thing is ease of use.
I love Apple Pay, I use it all the time for almost all payments in physical stores and all that allow it on the web. It’s easy, it’s convenient, it’s secure, and it makes paying for any item as easy as holding your Apple Watch to the payment terminal. And hence the concern. An open NFC can change that.
Competition is positive, but in some cases it leaves collateral damage
The main idea before an open NFC is that the Banks and corporations want to position their own payment solutions. Don’t just offer, but encourage usage in a very clear way, going so far as to stop offering support for Apple Pay. As the service begins to arrive in Spain, you will remember that not all banks have allowed their cards to be used with Apple Pay.
Those of us from another entity had to wait practically a year to enjoy a service that many of us now take for granted. On the other side of the world, in Australia, the situation was far worse than that Major Australian banks join forces against Apple Payso the introduction of the service took even longer.
Eventually, some banks embraced the service and the rest gradually gave in, but now, when NFC is opened to everyone, the situation could be reversed. Apple charges banks a small fee for using Apple Pay, but is careful not to collect transaction data. Between spending and less access to data about our habitsBanks have two good reasons to encourage payments from within their own applications.
Yes, I admit it, we are faced with a guess. Maybe we’re putting ourselves in the worst-case scenario, but given what happened with the arrival of the service, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me either. What would we gain with an open NFC in terms of payments? Do you store our credit cards in another application – let’s call it PayPal or something similar – to get the same service?
The integration of Apple Pay into our devices, instant double-press activation and Face ID seems unreachable for third-party apps. To be honest, I worry about a future in which Bank X is withdrawing its support for Apple Pay and their customers have to go to the bank’s app before bringing the iPhone closer to the data phone to pay. Is it an unfounded concern? Few.
It is true that competition always improves services, in some cases the services geared towards merging offers from different companies, like Apple Pay does, which centralizes mobile payments for all financial institutions, need sufficient autonomy to carry out their work. An advantage, or in this case the lack of alternatives, to avoid each bank offering its own form of payment in favor of competition.
I admit it may be too early to put my hands on my head, but personally I’m closely following the development of this little NFC chip in our iPhones and the regulations surrounding it. We’ll see how events unfold..
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Source : www.applesfera.com