Google Wallet & NFC

boblong

Hi,

Something that is making me consider jumping ship to android is NFC and Wallet. Reading some older posts here suggest that NFC situation is not good in Ireland, but I'm wondering has this changed at all?

Buying coffee with my phone might be a killer feature for me tbh. I'm easily pleased.

Solair

Well, almost all new Irish Visa debit cards are NFC enabled so there will be a hell of a lot of NFC enabled card processing terminals being rolled out soon.

Whether that opens up a possibility of using your phone or not is another question entirely.

boblong

OK thanks, not ideal I guess but I have more of a chance of being able with Android I suppose.

I've another question for you, do you know if syncing with a mac will be as painless as it is with the iPhone? Judging by stuff like this I'd imagine there are tools available.

ED E

Android has gone pretty much standalone, you dont really have to sync it with anything.

Get google music for your music, any video you can transfer just like you would to a thumb drive. Contacts all sync to your google account, as does calendar etc etc.

Solair

You can sync your contacts, calendar and email using Gmail / Google Apps quite easily with Macs without much fuss at all.

There are 3rd party apps out there to sync with iTunes if you have a lot of music (unencrypted) in there too.

PogMoThoin

NFC isn't just for payments, there are many everyday uses for tags throughout the home. I've got one beside the bed that mutes all volumes, turns off vibrate and displays the clock. Another in the van that turns on car mode, disables wifi and starts the music. One inside the door with my wifi encryption key so friends that call can connect by touching it. I even have one beside the cooker that sets a 3 minute timer for my eggs :pac:

boblong

It never entered my head that you could buy your own NFC tags and program your own behaviour. That's awesome.

ED E

PogMoThoin wrote: »

NFC isn't just for payments, there are many everyday uses for tags throughout the home. I've got one beside the bed that mutes all volumes, turns off vibrate and displays the clock. Another in the van that turns on car mode, disables wifi and starts the music. One inside the door with my wifi encryption key so friends that call can connect by touching it. I even have one beside the cooker that sets a 3 minute timer for my eggs :pac:

One of the few people really using NFC to its full potential.

Chet T16

Solair wrote: »

Well, almost all new Irish Visa debit cards are NFC enabled so there will be a hell of a lot of NFC enabled card processing terminals being rolled out soon.

Whether that opens up a possibility of using your phone or not is another question entirely.

Payzone have started replacing all the older terminals with the ones with nfc built in but for now it's disabled, some hoop jumping red tape issue.

It must be coming soon though as my laser was replaced by an nfc debit card recently even thoug it wasn't due to expire for months.

PogMoThoin

I suspect the real reason Apple didn't include NFC in the iPhone 5 is it doesn't fit in their walled garden, they'll add it when they've bastardised it. NFC is what you make of it

boblong

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I suspect the real reason Apple didn't include NFC in the iPhone 5 is it doesn't fit in their walled garden, they'll add it when they've bastardised it. NFC is what you make of it

If I might respectfully disagree, Apple doesn't restrict itself when it comes to their own first party apps. If they wanted to add an NFC reader/writer app as well as the hardware, it wouldn't have been outside their philosophy or past-behaviour to do so. In my opinion the exclusion was either technical (I'm thinking battery life) or political. They're betting heavily on Passbook, and the number of services supporting it is rising, including Starbucks apparently (please let this stereotype slide this once :P ).

Anyway, thank you all for the advice and insight, it's food for thought. I'm not sure if I'm compelled to leave right now (but Firefox OS might change that!).

PogMoThoin

boblong wrote: »

If I might respectfully disagree, Apple doesn't restrict itself when it comes to their own first party apps. If they wanted to add an NFC reader/writer app as well as the hardware, it wouldn't have been outside their philosophy or past-behaviour to do so. In my opinion the exclusion was either technical (I'm thinking battery life) or political. They're betting heavily on Passbook, and the number of services supporting it is rising, including Starbucks apparently (please let this stereotype slide this once :P ).

Anyway, thank you all for the advice and insight, it's food for thought. I'm not sure if I'm compelled to leave right now (but Firefox OS might change that!).

Eh, iTunes is everything opposite to what you said. You're right about Passbook, they won't allow NFC till they have a slice of the pie but like I showed, there's much more to NFC than just payments

boblong

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Eh, iTunes is everything opposite to what you said

What do you mean? I said that Apple has a clear distinction between first and third party apps and their restrictions (assuming non-Jailbroken for the moment). My point was that Apple could have included NFC (and locked it down if they wanted) and it would have been in line with past-behaviour. In my opinion the non-inclusion was for different reasons.

EDIT: NFC is an ECMA standard, I don't think any of the pie is left.

PogMoThoin

boblong wrote: »

What do you mean? I said that Apple has a clear distinction between first and third party apps and their restrictions (assuming non-Jailbroken for the moment). My point was that Apple could have included NFC (and locked it down if they wanted) and it would have been in line with past-behaviour. In my opinion the non-inclusion was for different reasons.

EDIT: NFC is an ECMA standard, I don't think any of the pie is left.

What I mean is, other than payments, what use is a locked down NFC in an Apple environment. It won't be added until they have found a way to monetise it somehow.

BopNiblets

I read Centra would be one of the first rolling out NFC paypoints but I've yet to see any...

errlloyd

Did I hear someone say that the Dublin Bus leap card terminals are basically NFC and might soon be phone enabled?

mickdw

I know the card readers in my local spar have the NFC symbol on the display - same symbol as on my new debit card. Must be coming soon.

ED E

errlloyd wrote: »

Did I hear someone say that the Dublin Bus leap card terminals are basically NFC and might soon be phone enabled?

They take leap cards so they're NFC enabled anyways. Whether or not they'll enable phone support I dont know.

Solair

The only other NFC rollout I've seen in Ireland is Zappa tags. They're used by some stores, particularly Insomnia, for their loyalty card scheme.

You just stick a tag on the back of your phone / wallet or whatever you want and you can collect points in stores that are using it.

Visa Debit contactless seems to be taking a long time to rollout. The cards are around for a good few months so far and as yet, I haven't seen any retailer using it.

I know Boots have rolled out compatible card readers to all their stores and some of the convenience store chains have done likewise.

I doubt it will be long before we start to see acceptance.

It'd be nice to see it rolled out on the public transport network properly too. I mean, it'd be very handy if you could pay for your bus/train/tram with a mobile wallet or a visa debit card.

ED E

Solair wrote: »

It'd be nice to see it rolled out on the public transport network properly too. I mean, it'd be very handy if you could pay for your bus/train/tram with a mobile wallet or a visa debit card.

The stupidity that goes on with public transport is insane, a good example being leap cards, they're not cheaper and you cant top up at train ticket machines, but you can at luas stations.

Technology is there, but the competence or willingness to get up off their asses, not so sure.

user1842

ED E wrote: »

They take leap cards so they're NFC enabled anyways. Whether or not they'll enable phone support I dont know.

Unfortunately the LEAP card is of a different standard to the NFC EMV contactless card so there is no compatibility between LEAP and NFC EMV contactless.

The NTA would have to upgrade all their terminals to make NFC EMV contactless cards work.

I will not comment on the reasons why (because I don't know) when implementing LEAP they did not make it the EMV standard. Very very unfortunate.

BopNiblets

[Rant]Never mind the bleedin' Leap cards! What about the eejits on the bus who don't check for free seats upstairs properly, forcing everyone else to think there's none and stand downstairs like a knob? [/Rant]

Ontopic:
So in theory could you sprint past the till and straight out the door of the shop as long as your NFC payment goes through? :pac: