Apple has announced its much anticipated mobile payment offering, Apple Pay. The new offering employs NFC (near field communications) and fingerprint identification technology, which allows users to make a payment by simply swiping their iPhone. With regards to security, Apple claimed that consumers’ accounts and transaction data will be kept away from company as well as merchants. The company revealed that it has partnered with payment companies such as Visa, and a number of commercial banks on this new offering. In addition, the application will soon be supported by various large retailers Macy’s and McDonalds.
China has seen exponential growth in the mobile payment market in the last few quarters. Leading players have successfully expanded mobile payment offerings from money market fund subscription to a range of other services such as taxi fare payments and lottery purchasing. Compared with Apple’s mobile payment product, Chinese companies have tended to choose QR codes rather than NFC technology as the payment means for O2O transactions. However, compared to Apple Pay, QR Code is a much less secure means of payment and is already under the Chinese regulatory scrutiny.
Now coming to India, it appears that the regulator RBI is unsure on which path tot take as sometimes it embraces USSD Interface, SMS, etc We really can’t blame the RBI as well, because any small loophole left in the system will be mis-used on a rampant scale [For example: il-literate Politicians during election] or for some other scam. Thus it will take a while for a mobile payment platform to emerge in India but is likely to be tied to the Aadhar Network for Authentication and RuPay as Payment Payment System.