With iOS 13, iPhones will be able to read NFC-enabled passports and other government IDs as well as write to NFC tags
NFC — the technology that helps to power Apple Pay as well other clever features for iOS apps like Launch Center Pro's tappable stickers - is getting a big upgrade with the launch of iOS 13, due out this fall.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the latest step in a slow, deliberate unsealing of the iPhone's NFC chip. Reports going back to May 2018 said Apple planned to give some developers more NFC access for Apple Pay-like interactions such as opening doors and replacing transit cards, and in spring 2019 an Apple Pay VP demoed NFC tags that trigger Apple Pay purchases without a special app, with Bird as launch partner.
iOS 13 widens that aperture from payments to identity and authoring: phones can read NFC-enabled passports and government IDs and write to NFC tags, which is what makes app-driven uses like Launch Center Pro's tappable stickers practical at scale.
First-order effects
- Developers gain two new capabilities in one release: reading government-issued NFC credentials (passports, IDs) directly in-app, and writing NFC tags — so identity-check and sticker-based automation apps ship without extra hardware.
- The Apple Pay tag-trigger feature from May now has a supply side: any developer can write the tags that fire those contactless purchase prompts, expanding beyond launch partners like Bird.
Second-order effects
- Businesses that verify identity in person — travel, hospitality, rental and check-in flows — get a phone-native path to scan e-passports, reducing reliance on dedicated NFC readers.
- Tag-writing turns NFC stickers into programmable inventory, giving venues, transit operators, and marketers a cheap way to deploy tap-to-pay and tap-to-launch touchpoints built on Apple's rails.
Third-order effects
- The cadence is the story: each iOS release hands over more of the secure chip — iOS 13.3 added FIDO2 security key support in Safari, and by iOS 18.1 Apple let developers run NFC contactless transactions on the Secure Element separate from Apple Pay — pointing toward the iPhone as general-purpose credential and payment infrastructure rather than an Apple Pay-only device.
- If that pattern holds, Apple's control point shifts from gating NFC entirely to certifying who gets which slice of the Secure Element, making NFC access policy a recurring regulatory and competitive battleground.
The trend: Apple is incrementally prying open the iPhone's NFC silicon release by release — from Apple Pay, to tag triggers, to ID reading and tag writing — turning a closed payments enclave into general-purpose contactless infrastructure.