[snom380]

Is the payment industry prepping for fingerprint authenticated NFC?

In half a year we're likely to see discussions about how whatever Apple is launching in 9 days was "obvious" and how they once again just happened to catch the wave at the right time. And for some reason other companies suddenly find it technologically feasible to fit NFC into their wearables, something that was apparently impossible before 9.9. 2014.

[personZ]

Not only do you hold up things that Apple hasn't released, gloating about their grand innovation of vapour, you apparently don't realize that credit cards have NFC. There is nothing "impossible" about fitting NFC in just about anything, and your strawman simply makes no sense at all.

Fingerprint authenticated NFC? That would be solving a complete non-problem, misunderstanding the whole role of NFC.

You can get business cards with NFC. Every Skylander action figure has NFC in it. Credit and payment cards have NFC. But here you're comically holding that putting it in a wearable will be a grand innovation.

This sort of bubble and ignorance is extraordinary. But yes, I fully expect that after Apple releases something, years after so many others embraced NFC, you'll go forth telling all how innovative they were.

[snom380]

I know what NFC is. I know how easy it is to implement and how cheap it is (I have two dev boards myself). I was making a joke. My point was that after Apple releases something, many competitors often follow the same path, even though said technology has been available for years, the difference being that once Apple puts it together in a usable way and adds good software on top, others decide they need to implement the same thing. Was 2010 the year when a thin, ARM based tablet computer finally became technically feasible? Of course not. But when Apple released the iPad, the rest of the world rushed to follow their example (including BlackBerry and HP).

In any case, let's come back in half a year or a year and see how other companies have responded to what, if anything Apple releases next week.