I fondly recall being planted in downtown San Francisco for the launch of Apple’s iPhone 5. Prior to the keynote, I surmised that Apple would finally add a 128GB storage option for those who still valued local storage, and that the iPhone 5 would be the first to boast NFC. After all, all of Apple’s rivals were already on the mobile payment bandwagon, and if anyone could spearhead mainstream adoption of tap-to-pay, it’d be Apple.
Neither of those predictions came true.
Fast forward a couple of years, and we ended up seeing both included in the iPhone 6 (and 6 Plus). Apple didn’t even rely on a proprietary chip — it’s the same NFC standard that’s been floundering around in Android and Windows Phone devices for years. Apple also didn’t generate a proprietary card, instead relying on the same 16 digit strings that your existing debit and credit cards already use.
So, what took so long?
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