[bsimpson]

Google Wallet was terrible because you had to unlock your phone and enter a PIN, making it instantly way more cumbersome than swiping a card.

Since the iPhones that have NFC also have TouchID, they can authenticate you instantly without resorting to a PIN. If it works as advertised, it will be a huge improvement over Google Wallet.

(I still think Square got closest to an ideal payment scheme with Pay with Square, where the cashier verifies your face to charge you without requiring you to pull anything out. Too bad they broke it by requiring you to pull out your phone to check-in before it would work.)

[FlailFast]

Agreed on Square, but they even went a step further for a time and allowed geofencing at your favorite places...back when Square Wallet was still around, I used to frequently go to a Houston-area coffee shop with Square Register and never had to pull my phone out to pay. It was downright magical...wish they hadn't cancelled Wallet, it really had so much potential.

[chrischen]

That's not the real issue. The real issue is that it doesn't fulfill the promise of you not having to hold your cards anymore (unless you only shop at Walgreens).

[swift]

In the short term, sure, but if there's sufficient uptake things might look different in a few years.

For me, it might not take much - just Walgreens, some supermarkets, and a decent number of local restaurants supporting this might be enough to allow me to leave my wallet at home on a typical workday. Ironically the one card I'd probably still need, my transit card (Clipper), I assume also uses NFC of some sort. It'd be nice if the new iPhone's NFC feature could support that as well.

[cbhl]

Clipper uses a technology called "MiFare DESFire". I'm under the impression that mobile phones can read these, but can't emulate them for some reason. (But apparently they can emulate its predecessor, MiFare Classic, which is unencrypted?)