Apple is reportedly operating to outfit the following era of its smartphone and tablet with near-field communications (NFC) technological know-how, which would let people make use of the units to produce cellular payments as an choice to cash and credit cards, as outlined by a story right now by the Bloomberg news service.
Richard Doherty, director of the technologies consulting firm Envisioneering Group, informed Bloomberg that equally the iPhone five from AT&T and the iPad 2 would likely include NFC chips, citing engineers doing work on the project.
NFC technological innovation lets units exchange information over a short distance--no more than four inches. As such, a cellular device equipped with NFC could send payment information from a bank account to a register or terminal, allowing people to use them to pay for items and services at stores, restaurants, and other types of retail outlets.
Apple(apple laptop batteries) has apparently been eyeing NFC for for some time. Last summer, the company hired an expert in NFC to join its mobile commerce team at the same time it reportedly was already testing the inclusion on the technological know-how in its subsequent iPhone.
Beyond the benefits to shoppers, companies like Apple stand to gain from NFC, notes Bloomberg. Like any business that accepts credit cards, Apple currently pays processing fees on every iTunes purchase made through a credit score card. By letting people pay for iTunes content on their iPhones via NFC, Apple could cut out the Visa or MasterCard middleman and trim its own expenses.
For tech users, the new technology could also help them more easily transfer and share files and settings between their NFC-equipped smartphones and other units, such as PCs.
Other players have also gotten into the act. Last November, AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile announced the creation of a new mobile payments network that would use NFC. Google soon followed up that up with the launch of its Nexus S Android phone packing an embedded NFC chip and with support for the engineering in Android 2.3, aka Gingerbread.
On its end, Apple is currently looking into launching a cellular payment service as early as the middle of this year, Doherty told Bloomberg.
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