In a new NFC patent application for the iPhone, Apple for perhaps the first time casts the phone in the role of a contactless-payment device.
The patent request, published last week and filed last year, though just coming to light, would enable users to make peer-to-peer payments by tapping their iPhones together, using credit card, bank or iTunes account data stored securely in the phones. They could also tap the phones on other devices to make payments or transfer money, for example on desktop computers or even point-of-sales terminals, according to the patent application.
UPDATE: And other patent applications emerging this past week have described NFC-enabled iPhones acting as POS terminals, including scanning products and taking payment. And iPhones could also make ATM transactions and store credit card, debit card and other payment accounts according to user preferences, then make retail purchases, stated the patent requests. The NFC interface would be involved in these financial transactions, but it's not clear whether Apple is claiming the retail transactions would be conducted in card-emulation mode like most payment services being developed for NFC phones. None of the recently published Apple patent applications specifically mentions the iPhone working in card-emulation mode, that is, mimicking contactless cards, although the descriptions of the mobile retail transactions are similar to the way contactless cards transmit data to readers.
