• NeatNit
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    5 months ago

    Until earlier this year, I could make NFC payments with the app of my credit card company. AFAIK contactless payments on Android were never locked to Google Pay/Wallet. But I have no idea why there’s no competition in this space. I’d expect e.g. PayPal to have something, but if they do I never heard of it - and I did look once, briefly.

    • kevincox@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      5 months ago

      Because to implement this you need to negotiate with individual credit card issuers. Basically how this works is that your phone is being issued a virtual card with the keys locked inside the phone’s HSM. Then it can be used to make NFC payments just like any physical card. So you need 1. contracts with many card providers, 2. card issuance processes with these providers 3. huge amounts of compliance bureaucracy. At the end of the day it isn’t really worth it unless you are a huge company and expect to have tons of users or see it as an essential feature of your phone OS.

      • NeatNit
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 months ago

        You mean the thing any credit card issuer does anyway?

        • kevincox@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          5 months ago

          Most credit card issuers don’t issue credit cards to random apps by solo developers.

      • NeatNit
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        5 months ago

        For generic contactless payments at shops? Or some closed system that only works with other PayPal users?

    • T (they/she)@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      It seems many banks/providers used to had this functionality and just stopped maintaining in favor of Google/Apple Pay.

      Hopefully they decide to do it again.