At first I was inclined to have the same reaction to this news, especially concerning early rumours about this. Having read some more on it however, I now realize that it is somewhat of a knee-jerk reaction.
From what I read, Apple Pay is the following things:
- A management interface to manage payment methods on your device.
- A user interface to interact with these payment methods.
- A set of APIs to interact with these payment methods from software.
- A term for hardware and software components in the iPhone that allow interaction of these payment methods with point of sale hardware.
What Apple Pay is not:
- A payment protocol.
So Apple Pay is a payment method management application. It is not a payment protocol. The payment protocol Apple Pay uses to interface with point of sale terminals is the same EMV protocol that is used for other solutions.
Any other payment method application can also use this same EMV protocol. Many do already in fact, such as Google Wallet. I would not be surprised if Wallet was able to interface with the shown POS hardware with barely any modification to the app.
I hope anyone with more knowledge of this project could confirm this interpretation is correct.
From what I read, Apple Pay is the following things:
- A management interface to manage payment methods on your device.
- A user interface to interact with these payment methods.
- A set of APIs to interact with these payment methods from software.
- A term for hardware and software components in the iPhone that allow interaction of these payment methods with point of sale hardware.
What Apple Pay is not:
- A payment protocol.
So Apple Pay is a payment method management application. It is not a payment protocol. The payment protocol Apple Pay uses to interface with point of sale terminals is the same EMV protocol that is used for other solutions.
Any other payment method application can also use this same EMV protocol. Many do already in fact, such as Google Wallet. I would not be surprised if Wallet was able to interface with the shown POS hardware with barely any modification to the app.
I hope anyone with more knowledge of this project could confirm this interpretation is correct.