iOS and mPOS Terminals - Contactless Payment

Question

Everywhere i am reading that it is not possible to write data in iOS Swift or ObjectiveC via NFC. What about handling a contactless payment process? Is this even possible without using Apple Pay? If not is there any workaround which enables “NFC Writing” for iOS, because NfCCore doesnt provide it yet?

Answer 1

Apple keeps the NFC functionality closed, so only Apple Pay is allowed to function. Other than reading NDEF tags, no apps can use the phone's hardware either to work as an NFC reader (for example to top-up balance for a public transit contactless card) or to emulate a contactless card, either purely in software or using the phone's embedded secure element.

As far as I know (Apple as always does not say much), the latest iPhones' hardware is perfectly capable of doing all of the above, but some commercial decision resulted in keeping it unavailable for third party developers.

Answer 2

Looks like it will be possible with iOS 13: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc/creating_nfc_tags_from_your_iphone