The iPhone maker is developing a handset that will tap FeliCa, the mobile tap-to-pay standard in Japan.
Apple may have a plan to make inroads in Japan’s mobile-payments market, but it doesn’t include Apple Pay, at least for now.
The tech titan is working on a new iPhone for Japan that consumers can use to make payments for trips on mass transit, Bloomberg reports. But instead of the near field communication (NFC) technology that powers Apple Pay, the iPhone would use FeliCa, a mobile tap-to-pay standard in Japan developed by Sony, unidentified sources told the news outlet.
Since its launch in 2014, Apple Pay has expanded to more than half a dozen countries around the world, but Japan isn’t one of them. Besides its already wide acceptance, FeliCa’s advantage over Apple Pay is said to be in speedy transaction time — just 0.1 second, according to Sony — because its transaction process isn’t hobbled by required bank approval.
The FeliCa chip can also store e-money, an electric form of currency that’s accepted at vending machines and cafes across the country.
Source: cnet.com
My comment:
Note to Apple: Just put in a bigger battery or make the battery replaceable. Stop ripping us off and causing us to waste our phones that still work but you purposely send out iOS “upgrades” that make it slower to spur more sales.
It may not arrive with the 2016 model iPhone, but the radically-redesigned 2017 model iPhone may get this feature, including models sold in the USA. It’ll probably be part of the NFC chip subsystem.