Apple has hired an expert in Near Field Communication (NFC) technology as its new product manager for mobile commerce. Benjamin Vigier, the expert involved, has been in the development of Near Field Communication technology since 2004 and most recently was product manager for mobile wallet, payment and NFC at mobile payments specialists mFoundry.
A barrage of NFC-related Apple patent applications have been published over the last few months. They cover a wide range of potential NFC application areas and include:
- An NFC-based mobile payments service that lets consumers make payments to merchants and other consumers via a credit or debit card, directly from their bank account or using credit stored in their iTunes account
- The ‘iPay, iBuy and iCoupons’ patents, describing a comprehensive mobile payments, mobile commerce and mobile marketing business based around an NFC-enabled iPhone
- Products+, an NFC-based product marketing and promotions application
- An airline ticketing and boarding pass application that describes an unmanned, automated airport ticketing and baggage counter kiosk and introduces the concept of an automated security checking process where users of the iTravel app could process themselves through the security clearance system and check themselves in at the boarding gate
- The Grab & Go patent, designed to make it easy for customers to transfer files between devices such as the Mac, iPhone and Apple TV
- An NFC-enabled iPod, games controller, TV and iPhone
- An NFC-based concert, entertainment and sports venue ticketing application that includes exclusive bonus features for users of Apple’s service
Tags: boarding pass, clearance system, ibuy, icoupon, ipay, Iphone, iphone app, ipod games, itravel, itravel app, mobile payment, near field communication, nfc, nfc based concert, nfc mobile payments