The payment system will offer a versatile function!
The payment system Pay Apple which reaches more and more countries, may have increased range and speed Due to the planned improvements that NFC (Near Field Communication) technology promises to bring in the coming years, and Apple has been working on it for some time, to solve the most common user problems.
Increased range and speed
How would you improve the range? First, remember that Apple Pay uses NFC as a short-range, high-frequency wireless technology to communicate with other devices and exchange data. However, this technology currently operates within a short range, so equipment needs to be close enough for the transfer of information such as contactless payments.
However, the NFC Forum plans to increase the current guaranteed range from four to six times the distance. That is to say, to go from a range of 5 mm to approximately 30 mm between the transmitter and the receiver. Although it doesn’t seem like a big change, expanding the radius this would increase reliability and speed when making contactless purchases.
How does this translate to Apple Pay? Using the app would be more reliable because it wouldn’t need to have the NFC chip of the iPhone or Apple Watch so close to the payment terminal, so will work in the first place, especially in situations where the payment terminal is misplaced. In terms of speed, the payment process would be faster as the transaction would be activated even by moving the device to the payment recipient.
Will there be any improvements for the Smart Wallet?
The improvements announced at WWDC 2023 recently won’t be the only ones. Nowadays, the NFC standard only admits one action which is to authorize the payment, but plan to introduce a new “soft key” feature which would enable several actions to be activated at the same time, such as point-to-point ticket delivery, identification of the loyalty card and issuance of transport tickets. For what you can imagine checking in your entire family at the airport exit gate.
With all of these changes, the NFC Forum says the work needed for the improvements is already underway, but it will take between two and five years before they’re released. It will be between 2025 and 2028 that the benefits will be visible. Most likely, Apple will need to install new NFC chips to support the new standards, so the iPhone 17 will likely be the first model capable of starting this transformation.
