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by DGCA 4299 days ago
I really hope this doesn't end up fragmenting the NFC payments space. Only Apple Pay is accepted in one place, and only Google Wallet is accepted in another. Both of these technologies work with contactless card readers, let's just stick with that.
4 comments

Aren't they both digital abstractions over NFC payments (e.g. PayPass)?

I have a feeling on the terminal side, it looks just like like a plastic card with PayPass.

It sounds like they both definitely work with your standard contactless card reader. My worry is that Apple will have an Apple only reader as well. I'm not saying that I think they will, but I wouldn't be surprised, either.
From the demo video, it looks like a "standard" reader that I've seen in use today.
A bit like Visa/Mastercard cards, I doubt any merchants are going to deliberately limit the type of NFC payments they accept.
ISIS already limits it to ISIS only.
FYI Isis changed their name to Softcard to sound less terroristy

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-03/isis-mobile-wallet-...

It would be funny if the terrorist group changed their name to avoid the association with Verizon Wireless
Gotcha. Well they still deny google wallet on their POS machines.
And people will still continue to ignore them as though there were no reader at all.
Thanks, I was going to Google and then thought "there's no way I will get relevant results"
IDK, as long as it's NFC and the terminals have firmware that can get upgraded to support additional standards, they could make it work.

I live in a country where banks tend to come up with similar payment technologies at the same time; one example is the Chipknip vs Chipper, both bank card technologies for putting pre-paid amounts of cash on the card to be used to pay without having to enter a PIN or the longish time it took for a regular card payment to process. Didn't take long for the payment terminals to support both platforms.

ATM we've got a similar fight going on; a few banks have contactless payments now, but one bank is going for NFC payments via (very specific models of) smartphones (Samsung Galaxy models; I gathered they're using an already deprecated API/technology for that). But the same argument applies; both technologies use NFC, so all it needs to work is a firmware upgrade.

I'm hoping they stick to a standard that everyone else can use (ideally the existing ones we already have like PayPass).

I've had NFC on Android phones for almost 2 years now, but I've still never been able to use it in the UK. We have some contactless payment terminals now, but the only services that allow you to use NFC payments on your phone here are tied to specific banks/carriers, or only work on specific phones.

I'm hoping that Apple Pay will push more merchants and services to start accepting NFC payments in general.