Earlier this month, Apple launched it’s iOS 8.1 update which now allows the integrated NFC (near-field communication) reader in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to finally allow mobile payments under the Apple Pay platform.  Welcome to the party Apple!  As Android, Samsung and Nokia have had NFC capabilities for years now, most retailers and restaurants in the US were already prepared when the iPhone 6 launched last month with fully-functional NFC capacity.  With more than 220,000 retailers already supporting an NFC Pay solution, it’s obvious that we will be seeing more and more mobile payments in the future.  By now you may be asking yourself, is this secure?

The answer is Yes!  Arguments for mobile payments tote that they are far more secure than mag-stripe or even chip and pin credit cards.  Apple Pay securely uses a unique device ID for payments instead of credit card numbers.  This makes it far more difficult for cyber criminals to sniff out credit card numbers between a payment terminal and a POS system, because no credit card number is being passed over the air.  With many of the data breaches over the last year generally resulting in stolen credit card numbers, this can mitigate the problem as merchants only see the device ID, not account numbers.

At Tx Systems, we have dedicated our lives to understanding and educating people on the use of NFC for payment systems, loyalty applications , and just good old awesome technology applications.  If you have any questions about NFC and the general way it can be used, or if you have an idea that you would like our professional consulting team to advise upon, please don’t hesitate to call.

We look forward to meeting you.

Call 858-622-2004 and ask for an NFC expert today or Contact sales@txsystems.com.

Be sure to check out our NFC products page.

This blog post was a collaboration between Eric Gregg and Rebecca Drexler.