Apple intros Passbook mobile wallet

Apple's Passbook, announced at this week's developer conference as part of iOS 6, is clearly a step towards near field communications (NFC) payments, but even in its present form, it has people pretty excited, so it's a shame that it won't work with the UK's biggest e-ticket deployment, The Register reports.

Passbook is like an address book for storing tokens and tickets, with associated machine-readable bar codes and geographic hotspots. The tickets are presented to the user with a consistent interface, and are integrated into the lock screen for automatic display where needed, but Apple will only display static tickets: thus locking out the bar code-based e-tickets proving so popular on the UK train network.

According to NFC World, the iPhone maker says it will provide "templates" to help developers put their passes and cards into the app.

Passbook will use geolocation to bring up relevant cards, coupons and vouchers as the user nears a store, and also boasts live connections so that information such as a gate number attached to a boarding pass can be updated in real-time.

The biggest hurdle comes at point of sale, Business Insider writes.

Credit and debit cards need an extra layer of security. That's why mobile payment services like Google Wallet use special NFC chips in phones. NFC chips let users tap their phones on a payment pad to complete a transaction.

The iPhone doesn't have NFC (yet), so Passbook is limited to gift cards that can be scanned by the merchant. If and when Apple does add NFC to the iPhone, then we'll start seeing credit card payments come to the iPhone.

The mobile wallet niche is already flush with competitors, though none have Apple's ubiquity in the mobile device market, American Banker says.

Google has a live digital wallet that is being offered on the Nexus S 4G phone that is being carried by Sprint with participation from Citigroup. Isis, a digital wallet backed by rival carriers AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile, is being tested in Austin and Salt Lake City. In the meantime, Sprint is reportedly planning its own mobile wallet that may compete with the one that it offers through Google.

The Passbook app will be built into Apple's new iPad and iPhone mobile operating platform, iOS 6, which is set to be released in the fall, according to news reports. Apple unveiled Passbook at its worldwide developer's conference, in San Francisco, on Monday.