MasterCard tries to zap PayPal with own-brand mobe wallet Walk into any of Apple’s 400 shops, pick up an accessory, boxed software or any one of the other items the Mac maker’s stylish emporia have out on shelves, and, if you have an Apple ID and an iPhone, you can buy the products you want without having to interact with one of the firm’s happy-clappy minions. The system works with …
The way I'd do it is to have a barcode as part of the receipt that can be scanned by the security guard to confirm that it's valid. That would make it harder to fake one, you'd have to be able to generate a barcode that referred to a recent transaction in that store. If numbers were allocated sequentially across all stores rather than just local, you'd have a hard time guessing a valid one for the store in which the thief was operating.
I have to dispute your claim that 'MasterCard comes late to e-payments', back in the late 90's it purchased MXI, which had created the Mondex e-wallet, MultOS for smartcards and a host of related technologies.
Mondex died off, along with VISA Cash, but anyone using an Oyster PAYG card on the tube is walking in their footsteps.
Seriously. "Dabbled"? My Mastercards have been PayPass enabled for years now. I almost exclusively use Interac, but I'm pretty sure that almost every terminal I've seen for years has accepted them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MasterCard#PayPass
http://www.mastercard.ca/cardholder-services/mobile-payments.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac
"Since its national launch in 1994, Interac Direct Payment has become so widespread that, since 2001, more transactions in Canada were completed using debit cards than cash."
PayPal and Google don't (yet) need to be. It's the card they're acting as a proxy for that's covered by the Act, leaving you with the opportunity to sue the card issuer - or, better, get them to sort it all out - if neither the seller nor PayPal/Google can address your complaint.
Since we are obviously moving towards a cashless society (whether that's wise or not), perhaps the real opportunity for NFC is to have the "gubbermints" themselves take up the NFC cause and stop printing/stamping money and provide a card instead.
That way everyone will become a customer of a "single payer" monetary system and the banks and credit card companies can be reduced to payment processors.
What better way to reduce the deficeit if the "gubbermints" can take 3-5 % of every transaction, online or offline.
What could go wrong?
(For those who didn't get it, there was an element of sarcasm in my post)
The way I see it, this "bonking" tech is useful for high-throughput stores, sell high volume, cheap, commodity-based items.
Pay by bonk/wallet for a £2,000+ imac, which I'll maybe do once every 5 years? No...methinks not. When I buy a computer worth £2,000, I want it delivered on a velvet cushion, carried by angels, and Steve Jobs himself getting out the grave to shake hands and thank me personally for my purchase. "bonking" doesn't really make my high ticket purchase feel "special".
And the rest of Apple's range of goodies hardly comes under the "high volume, cheap, commodity-based items" banner either.
The only time it could be handy is if you lost the card/wallet. Having a backup would be handy.
The flip side is of course, lose your phone and there is potentially a way to use your card stored right there. Considering many peoples personal security... seems a bit dangerous to me.
I'm not even really keen on RFID cards to be honest, for purchase. Fine with Oyster though. No direct link into my bank account. Call me old fashioned, I'm not even thirty, but I quite like the idea of having a bit of a physical gap between.
Use this interesting method of payment that involves paper with (in the USA) green backs and pictures of dead presidents and other elder statesmen (UK version seems to have pictures of some fancy lady). It always seems to work and you might even get some metallic goodies in return, along with other nice pictures.
Sorry, I'm a bit old fashioned at times.
The Apple Store system sounds fantastic.
Walk in, pick it up, scan it, generate a receipt, walk out the door and show the receipt to security - all from a jailbroken app that shows receipts on the screen.
Now I understand why Apple is keeping money in the bank - its to cover the losses just walking out the shop door.
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