Is Applepay just using NFC to pay for stuff? Presumably it requires tie-in from banks and/or shops?
This is what makes Apple so successful.
Google built an OS that can comunicate with an NFC chip. Android hardware manufacturers put NFC chips in all their phones. Whoop Whoop. They have a line on a spec sheet that helps them sell their phones.
But they forgot that people actually needed a way to use the thing.
For Apple putting the NFC chip in the phone was only a tiny piece of the puzzle. They’ve also developed a way use it. At launch Apple Pay will work with loads of banks, all the major credit cards and 220,000 retail stores (in the USA). So at launch a large slug of users will be able to buy the phone and then imediately pop to Target, Walgreens, McDs or Starbucks and pay with the thing.
Being apple they have done this in a walled garden kind of way that will piss some people off but the it’s the fact that they have done it at all that makes things actually work. This means that both Android and iPhone users will have NFC chips in their phones but a much higher proportion of iPhone users will actually use them.
The same is true of apps. In theory Android offers so many more possibilities and freedoms to app developers but iPhone users actually buy and use a much higher number of apps because Apple put the extra effort into ensuring they are good.