Apple

Apple Working on NFC Capabilities for the iPhone 5?

A new report suggests Apple could be working on implementing NFC capabilities into the next iPhone and may talking with MasterCard and Visa for payment processing.

9to5Mac spoke to a well-connected developer at MacWorld who is building a NFC app for the iPhone. When asked why he would do that given the limited NFC support for the device, the developer told the site that he had no hardware knowledge, but he had spoken to Apple iOS engineers on multiple occasions, and they are "heavy into NFC."

When asked how confident he was, the developer said, "Enough to bet the app development on."

Late last week Ed McLaughlin, the head of emerging payments at Mastercard, made some interesting comments about NFC/Paypass to Fortune Company:

"The timeline is always as rapid as it makes sense for consumers," he says. "That's a combination of having a critical mass of the merchants, which is what you're seeing right now, and getting devices into the hands of consumers. I don't know of a handset manufacturer that isn't in process of making sure their stuff is PayPass ready."

So that would include Apple then?

"Um, there are...like I say, [I don't know of] any handset maker out there," McLaughlin says. "Now, when we have discussions with our partners, and they ask us not to disclose them, we don't."

Interestingly, a Visa representative did confirm to Fortune Company that they have talked to Apple about their PayWave system.

"I can't tell you when Apple is going to put NFC in the next version of the iPhone," Bill Gajda, the Global Head of Mobile Product said, "but we've had discussions with them around the PayWave standard and they've asked to look at our specification and certification process so that when they decide to do something those lines of communication are open."