They can always take a competitive stance later, once small businesses have gotten rid of all their PoS hardware. This makes that initial adoption much easier.
While it will reduce how often card readers will be used, card readers will be around for a while yet. In many markets contactless (atlest with real plastic) still has limits requiring the card holder to validate themselves (in the UK it’s a max of £100 per transaction and £200 over multiple transactions) and some card holders dislike contactless completely so have cards without it.
So in those markets you will still need supporting hardware for the times you can’t accept contactless or risk losing the sale.
The iPhone has a secure element that will allow for it to implement the SCRP (Secure Card Reader for PIN) PCI standard.
So this allows for an iPhone/iPad/Android phone/tablet to implement EMV contact/contactless payments (obviously contact would require a physical card reader). Contactless payments above floor limits (eg in Australia $100) can require a PIN that would be entered through the tablet.
For me personally, I only use my real plastic when my battery is low on my phone. So you have to account for times may not have their phone with them.
My bank allows for location based security. If my phone is not near the location the card is being used I then have to use chip and pin instead of contactless (dead battery, poor cell service, unable to get a decent location fix because of the building, all these can trigger the need to revalidate).
And a lot of people still don’t have banking apps on their phone (one of the reasons banks had to support SMS 2FA when implementing Strong Customer Authentication).
I’m not too sure if the banks/ Visa/MC would be too happy allowing users to enter their pins on the retailers phone as pin pads are supposed to be encrypted.
We are seeing cards come with biometrics and pin pads on them, these cards will help with “card terminal less” transactions, but both bans will have to start issuing them and card users will have to be happy using them (I still know quite a few people who refuse to use contactless at all).
So imo those BlueTooth card terminals will be with us for a while to come, they will just be used less, which is why imo Apple worked with partners who already have such terminals as a fall back for whenever contactless can’t be used.
Its done on your device, not on banks side iirc, but its an optional thing you can opt into if you wish, thats not the default config when opening an account (can also be toggled on/off at will in the app, so i'm not too worried about it tbh).
No, it's not done on-device. Think about it: they know where the merchant is for card-present transactions, so how do they know how far apart the card and your phone are if they don't know where your phone is?
That is primarily a US issue. In EU/AU/CA/NZ and increasingly in Asia, EMV chip+pin and contactless(+pin) are used and mag stripe is specifically excluded from the new standards.
So in those markets you will still need supporting hardware for the times you can’t accept contactless or risk losing the sale.