Is Apple back on the mobile payment bandwagon?
Apple filed a patent last week that might (I repeat, might) signal that the company is willing to move one step closer to incorporating a mobile wallet application within its devices. More to the point, the patent described using NFC technology (yes! NFC!) within a sales transaction that uses NFC as a secure link with a purchasing device. The device then uses a different wireless interface to complete the transaction.
Commentators in the industry were quick to point out that Apple could simply be keeping its options open and would ultimately reaffirm their support of iBeacon technology.
I am not so sure. The key here is proximity for payment and, in certain cases, that rules out iBeacon. While iBeacon is meant for nearby location use-cases, the definition of 'nearby' is more like a 100 feet radius. That works well enough for proximity marketing but not so good for payment transactions in which the distance should be much smaller for security purposes. For such close distance data transfers, NFC would have the edge (in my opinion), as well as ensuring much greater security of said data transfer.
Of course, all of this speculation and may well be Apple simply covering their bases, but who knows what the next iPhone generation will have on board. And as they tend to come out each year, we won't have that long to wait. If you want to read more about this topic, I can recommend the site 'Patently Apple' and their review of the patent. Bottom line, though, Apple may well have realised that the time for ignoring the idea of the mobile wallet is over and this could well be their call to action.
Talking about iBeacons and BLE, I am surprised that we have not seen more on the topic in the trade press. While I do not think that the technology deserves the same kind of coverage that, say, NFC does – I was surprised that we have not heard more. Especially from those companies involved in bringing technology into marketing and loyalty campaigns. Actually, that's not entirely true. We have heard their arguments about why these different technologies can peacefully co-exist and the benefits that each technology can bring to specific types of campaigns – that's all well and good. What I have yet to see is news concerning the actual implementation of the technology into a company's offering.
Until last week, when I ran across two items that spoke about BLE. Germany's Wirecard AG made an announcement to the press that they had integrated Bluetooth low energy (BLE) technology under the name “Bluetooth BLE Smart Payment” into their existing Mobile Wallet platform as an additional payment technology service. Along with NFC and QR code, BLE is the third contactless payment standard to be supported by Wirecard’s mobile solutions.
This was closely followed by Thinaire announcing that they too had launched what they are calling ‘the first unified omni-channel mobile engagement marketing and sales solution allowing brands to engage consumers via nearly any mobile onramp to bring media, objects and spaces to life on consumers’ most personal devices – their smartphones, tablets and connected devices’ (anyone else beg to differ?). Thinaire’s enterprise-grade Bluetooth® Low Energy (BLE) solution, Thinaire® Spaces, is 'the integration of BLE and NFC technologies for consumer-facing brand marketing and commerce on mobile'. Good for them, but I doubt if they will be the only players in the field that can make such a claim for much longer with so much competition out there.
Which brings me very cleverly onto my final subject for the editorial - the Contactless & Mobile Awards. In case you didn't know - time is fast approaching for the nomination deadline; specifically the end of this week. Now, don't panic - you still have time to drop us an email and let us know if you are interested in nominating either your own company or someone else's and into which categories you would like to be nominated. You do so by following this link, filling in the blanks and pressing 'send' - so easy! And entry is still free of charge! So what are you waiting for? After all, nothing ventured…
Until next week,
Steve Atkins
Contactless Intelligence
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