Opinion: Apple has the technical chops to safely open up its NFC chip for third party payments apps, and the main reason it is not doing it is the revenue
Oil fluctuated as investors weighed a pledge by the G7 … John Gruber / Daring Fireball : ★ Noted Interaction Design and Security Expert Margrethe Vestager Redesigns the iPhone's NFC Support Ewdison Then / SlashGear : Apple Health Instacart-Like Service Was Briefly On The Table David Phelan / Forbes : Apple AirPods Pro 2, AirPods Max Important Updates Coming, Insider Claims Malcolm Owen / AppleInsider : AirPods Pro 2, new AirPods Max colors expected for fall launch Ian Zelbo / AppleTrack : Second-generation AirPods Max rumored to launch later in 2022 Ian Zelbo / AppleTrack : The wait is almost over: AirPods Pro 2 are coming this Fall Malcolm Owen / AppleInsider : Apple plans more Fitness+ workouts and Instacart-style service alongside payment features Tom Sykes / The Apple Post : Apple rumored to release new AirPods Max colors in the fall Heedo Abu Laban / Appleosophy : Gurman: AirPods Pro 2 Debuting This Fall, New AirPods Max Colors Coming Tweets: @daringfireball : ★ Noted Interaction Design and Security Expert Margrethe Vestager Redesigns the iPhone's NFC Support https://daringfireball.net/... Matt Millar / @millarm : @daringfireball Your repeated assertion “But before Apple Pay, NFC was hardly used” does not ring true at all. In UK and EU NFC was broadly in use long before Apple Pay. https://www.statista.com/... shows me contactless was 50%.... Before Apple Pay launched in 2015 Tom Inniss / @tominniss : Don't always agree, and this is one of those times. NFC has been prolific in the UK/Europe for years, and I could choose between GPay and Barclaycard payment while I was at Uni. https://twitter.com/... Jonathan Lang / @germanjon : @daringfireball I hope someone challenges @gruber on this. I don't see any reason why you couldn't allow PayPal or other apps access to NFC communication. And why not have a preference which wallet app should be the default wallet, just like there is now for email apps, for users that care. Thom Holwerda / @thomholwerda : tell me you've never been to europe without telling me you've never been to europe https://twitter.com/... @macrike : @daringfireball I was using contactless payments using NFC technology literally *years* before Apple Pay even existed. You should do some research before publishing so many nonsensical words. cc @gruber Alastair Campbell / @alastc : @daringfireball As others mentioned, the situation in Europe is quite different from what you're used to. From here it seemed more like Apple Pay used the well-trodden path of “tap to pay” with cards/NFC. Also, with an API, couldn't the NFC trigger the appropriate app opening, then faceID? @ianbetteridge : This letter from Apple employees to their leadership counters all the points which Cook et al are using to insist on moving back to the office so well. [Quotes AppleTogether.org's “Thoughts on Office-bound Work” story] @kayjebelli : No company should be under a general obligation to open up its proprietary technology to 3rd parties just because it can. Companies are entitled to profit from their investments in a market economy. Those who argue otherwise sow the seeds of our collective decline. https://twitter.com/... @tron : This is really good. Not all of Apple's decisions re: OS control are anti-competitive. Sometimes it's just good design. https://twitter.com/... Steven Aquino / @steven_aquino : One important note to this classic @gruber excoriation is Apple Pay's accessibility. What I said in 2014 about it is just as relevant now: That you need not special modes or settings to make it accessible shows how masterfully Apple designed the feature. https://daringfireball.net/... Zoë Schiffer / @zoeschiffer : Ian Goodfellow, Apple's director of ML, is leaving due to its return to work policy, saying in a note that “more flexibility would have been the best policy”
Context & Ripple Effects
The argument arrives as Apple was reportedly planning a broader move into payment processing, lending-risk assessment, credit checks and fraud analysis through its expanding financial-services operation. Keeping the device payment interface closed would preserve control at a layer adjacent to those ambitions.
It also extends a recurring criticism in the coverage that Apple’s platform access can be defined by exclusivity rather than developer distribution, as in the App Store gatekeeping critique. The NFC question therefore concerns who may compete for payment-app relationships on Apple devices.
First-order effects
- Third-party payment-app providers remain unable to use Apple’s NFC chip for contactless payments under the reported access restriction, leaving Apple Pay as the controlled route.
- Apple retains control over the payment experience on its devices; the article’s revenue rationale is an opinion, rather than a disclosed Apple policy justification.
Second-order effects
- Payment providers seeking iPhone users must continue to work through Apple’s payment path rather than differentiate through their own NFC-based apps.
- Apple’s planned expansion into financial-services functions makes NFC access a more consequential boundary between platform control and outside payment providers.
Third-order effects
- If device-level payment interfaces remain controlled by platform owners, competition in mobile payments will center increasingly on access terms set by operating-system gatekeepers rather than only on consumer-facing payment features.
- The dispute is part of a broader contest over whether APIs that control real-world transactions should remain proprietary platform infrastructure or become contestable access points.
The trend: Mobile-payment competition is shifting toward control of the device interfaces that determine which financial services can reach users.