NFC on iPhone/iOS

What happened?

As part of an agreement between the European Union and Apple, Apple has decided to open access to its NFC module forto 3rd party developers. It allows creationto create solutions for contactless payments (HCE), alternative to Apple Pay.

This article aims to explain the challenges and opportunities related to this technology.

What are the differences compared to Android?

Since 2013 Android allows implementing alternatives to Google's own Google PayPay, and there are already a few mature solutions already on the market. Apple's NFC API offers very similar capabilities from both froma technical and from user experience perspectives.perspective. ThereHowever, there are however a few differences:

• Not possible to directly ask a user to set your application as the default NFC payment app - on AndroidAndroid, when userusers opensopen your app, they can be presented with a dialog window,window that asks them if they want to use your app, as the default NFC payment app. Apple's documentation doesn't seem to hint at such a functionality.
• Apple needs to give you special entitlement to access the NFC module - without Apple's approvalapproval, it's not possible to include NFC payments into your app. This entitlement can be requested here: https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/hce-payments-entitlement/
• Security certification - every app enabling NFC payments needs the EMVCo certification. As NFC on the Apple platform is a new thing, it's still not clear how exactly security certification will look like, however due to fundamental differences between Android and iOS we can expect slight differences.

What are the differences compared to Apple Pay?

Apple's API allows 3dr party developers to implement most of the functionality offered by Apple Pay. Two slight differences are:

• Power Reserve modeMode - Apple Pay allows payments with the default card for some time after the iPhone battery wasis depleted.
• Express Transit modeMode - allows to pay for public transport tickets in a few areas,areas with compatible cards, without unlocking the iPhone. Full list of placeslocations is available here.

Will it work outside the EU?

Companies registered in the European Economic Area can offer this functionality to customers based in EEA. TableThe table below shows various combinations of companies wanting to offer HCE payments in their App &and customerscustomers, and the expected outcome according to AppleApple's requirements.

	Company developing App established & licensed for payments in EEA	Company developing App not present in EEA or not licensed for payments in EEA
EEA citizen, transacting in EEA country	✅HCE available	❌HCE not Available
EEA citizen, transacting outside EEA (traveling)	✅HCE available	❌HCE not Available
non-EEA citizen, transacting in EEA country (traveling)	❌HCE not Available	❌HCE not Available
non-EEA citizen, transacting outside EEA country	❌HCE not Available	❌HCE not Available