Two recent comments led to this post. One is by David Marcus of Paypal who long held fast to his belief that NFC based payments had high barriers to entry – cost, complexity while offering very little upside. Paypal’s position on NFC (Not For Commerce) had always been a bit zealous – understandable as in a world of Secure Elements – Paypal (and many others) could not meaningfully participate. But Marcus’s recent post is an attempt to view NFC/HCE as one of the three trends that could transform the retail payment experience – is a pragmatic view to a complex and heterogeneous retail environment. Marcus speaks on how Paypal has come to adopt a cautiously optimistic view of NFC/HCE, now that there are no gatekeepers extracting a toll and because HCE (thanks to SimplyTapp) finally offers a level playing field in the Android ecosystem. Continue reading
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Drop Labs – Skating to where the puck's going to be.
Category Archives: NFC
HCE: We are not in Kansas anymore
Both Visa and MasterCard announced their support for HCE and their intent to release HCE specifications soon. I have been talking about HCE from late 2012 (partly due to my involvement with SimplyTapp) and you could read as to why HCE matter and what Android KitKat-HCE announcement meant for payments. But in light of the network certification announcements yesterday, this post is an attempt to provide some perspective on what the V/MA moves mean, how do their approaches differ in certifying payments using cloud hosted credentials, what should issuers expect from a device and terminal support perspective, why retailers should take note of the debate around HCE and ultimately – the role I expect Google to continue to play around HCE. All good stuff. Continue reading
MCX Part II – Waiting to Exhale
For an ecosystem that has been described as unfair and out of balance, creating a prevailing atmosphere of mistrust, the payments industry should really look to the MacWorld Expo of 1997 for lessons to its future.
“We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.”
What Steve Jobs meant was that for Apple, this was not a zero-sum game. Apple dominated in the years since, by creating new markets, and devices that captured both minds and marketshare. Continue reading
Lessons from a breach
In the days following the Target breach, both clarity and objectivity are in short supply. Everything that didn’t already exist became suddenly the cure-all – EMV being one. Retailers bristle, albeit in private – due to the asymmetry in blame they have come to share compared to banks – despite having equal ownership of the mess they have come to call payments. Issuers and Schemes scramble to find an empty deck chair on the Titanic, just to get a better view of the first of the lifeboats capsizing. Continue reading
Host Card Emulation: NFC’s Tale of Redemption
When I wrote about Host Card Emulation back in March, it provoked much debate around whether this capability will die on the cutting floor or be meaningfully integrated in to a future Android iteration. And now that it has, this post is an attempt to look forward, even though much of it is speculative. But I will provide some perspective from a number of conversations I had in the last week with Networks, Issuers, TSMs, Merchants, Platform Owners and EMV practitioners and provide some insight in to perceptions, impacts and the road ahead for NFC. And I will provide some context to why HCE matters to each of these players. Continue reading
Smoke is rising from Apple’s conclave
TL;DR Read within as to how Touch ID is made possible via ARM’s TrustZone/TEE, and why this matters in the context of the coming Apple’s identity framework. Also I explain why primary/co-processor combos are here to stay. I believe that eventually, Touch ID has a payments angle – but focusing on e-commerce before retail. Carriers will weep over a lost opportunity while through Touch ID, we have front row seats to Apple’s enterprise strategy, its payment strategy and beyond all – the future direction of its computing platform. Read on… Continue reading
Isis : A JV at odds
Isis has had a slew of announcements – about an impending national rollout and further assertion by both Amex and Chase of their intent to continue their partnership. Surprisingly (or not) Capital One has stayed mum about its plans, and neither has Barclays or Discover shown any interest. And much ink has been spilled at how resolute (and isolationist) Isis has been – including here on this blog. So does the launch reflect a maturity in the JV to tackle a national rollout, or is it being forced to show its hands? Wait..I have more questions.. Continue reading
Return of NFC: Curse of the Secure Element
This post is in response to the recent Bankinter story of NFC payments at the point-of-sale without requiring SE – and the lack of any real detail around how it plans to achieve that goal. I am not privy to Bankinter’s plan to dis-intermediate the SE, but as I know a wee bit about how NFC works, I thought a post would help in clearing up any ambiguity as to how Card emulation and Host Card emulation differs, upsides, challenges – the whole lot. Continue reading
GoogleWallet & Citi – Dance with the one that brung ya…
At midnight yesterday, Google sent me an email on how the new GoogleWallet update will now allow me to store my “Citi MasterCard” online. As other Google Wallet aficionados may recall (Bueller..? Bueller..?), Citi was the lone holdout in Google Wallet’s journey to the cloud and its race to conformity. Though to the untrained eye the Google Wallet app experience was mostly uniform irrespective of the card used to pay at the point-of-sale, behind the scenes, if the Citi MasterCard was used, Google had to do things one way versus another way for the rest of the brood. Continue reading