Apple announced they would be adding near-field communication (NFC) to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, in order to implement their new mobile payment service, Apple Pay.
Some developers were hoping to take advantage of the newly acquired NFC chip, to use on their own apps, but it looks like on iOS 8 the NFC chip will be locked to Apple Pay.
This is not the first time Apple has locked away its technology from the outside world, Touch ID only works with Apple’s unlocking system and payments, but in iOS 8 has been expanded to work with other apps.
Apple Pay is a big step for Apple in the mobile payments world, competing with PayPal, Google Wallet and other online and in-store services. Even though it is unfair advantage for Apple Pay on iOS, it also opens up Apple Pay to easy success.
We are not sure if the NFC chip will have any custom functionality on the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, from our understanding, Apple will simply hide the chips existence, apart from when developers want to add Apple Pay to their app.
Apple Pay still has a tough road ahead, even with this free pass to rule supreme on iOS 8. Currently only 220,000 stores in the US will accept contactless NFC payment, while nine million will accept credit and debit cards, making it a small minority.
Apple might look to increase the volume of shops using the contactless payment technology, simply by providing it to the small stores. This would be a huge deal, if Apple started acquiring the exclusive rights to a shops NFC payment card.
We doubt that will happen however, Apple has never been one to offer free technology to businesses, that is more Google. Since Google Wallet is still stuck in limbo in the United States, we cannot see them providing stores with contactless payment readers either.
