Apple has been sending out clues about the possibility of the company processing payments on mobile devices. After rumors about secret meetings, patent filings and analyst predictions, Apple is reportedly seeking to hire for two new electronic payment senior positions.
After Apple introduced its Passbook app, allowing consumers to store tickets, loyalty cards, passes and gift cards on their iPhones, the rumour mill has not stopped talking about Apple soon introducing Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology. iPhone users will be able to make mobile payments to merchants using NFC, but Apple remains silent on the issue as usual, making it unclear as to how interested the company is in developing a mobile wallet.
There were earlier reports that Apple's iTunes and App Store head had a secret meeting about mobile payments with other industry executives. The company is said to be hiring two senior electronic positions such as head of product and head of business development.
"Their ambitions are very, very serious," one of the sources told Re/code. However, Apple expressed concerns about customer backlash should there be any issues with the merchants. Many consumers are also reportedly concerned about security issues with various mobile payment players having their own systems.
Apple also filed a patent application that appears to be the back-end system for a mobile wallet system. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent on Jan. 16, describing it to be a "method to send payment data through various air interfaces without compromising user data." The patent involves securing electronic transactions using existing mobile payment technology.
This patent attempts to address the consumers' concern about mobile payment security by building two separate and supposedly secure connections for the mobile device. This link between the phone and the retailer's point of sale device would use NFC, but since Apple still does not work on NFC, the patent would involve Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in the meantime.
The patent could also be a link between the mobile device and a backend server that would establish a secret platform, containing public private keys, symmetric keys and other encrypted information. The crypto key would be generated from the secret platform and securely stored on the device. The server would create a key based on the secret connection and compare the key from the mobile device. The server would deem the transaction legitimate should the keys match and only then would it charge the credit card.
However encouraging all these clues may look, a patent filing does not always mean Apple will push through will the mobile payment technology and it may never see the light of day.
