[scholia]

In Europe, we can already pay for things with contactless bank cards, without even tapping (up to about $30). If you want to do it like NFC or iPay, you can always stick your payment card to the back of your phone....

UKCards Association says "44.6 million contactless cards in circulation in the UK, used to make 22.1 million contactless transactions in May 2014". http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/contactless_consumer...

[madeofpalk]

You joke about sticking your card to your phone but that's what my bank did https://www.commbank.com.au/blog/tap-pay-new-commbank-app-io...

[batuhanicoz]

We have NFC sim cards in Turkey that enables regular phones (even dumb ones) to make purchases. (http://www.garanti.com.tr/en/personal_banking/credit_cards/b...)

There are also NFC enabled stickers, watches and key fobs.

[scholia]

Wasn't joking ;-)

[induscreep]

Even BofA in the USA issued tags that could be attached to the back of a phone (or anywhere else).

That's what I don't understand...why does a NFC transaction have to involve smartphones? What is it that needs the processing power of a smartphone? Is it so that Goog Wallet/Apple Pay can access your transaction data?

[djrogers]

In Google's case, yes - access to transaction data is absolutely part of the plan. Apple explicitly set their system up so they don't get that data though.

NFC payments don't have to involve smartphones, but look at what Apple Pay gets you:

- Biometric auth - one-time numbers generated for each transaction - multiple cards in one place - hides your info from the vendor (and apple for that matter)

Those are pretty nice things to get from something that lets me ditch my wallet...