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Square Resource LibraryWhat is a contactless payment?A contactless payment, as the name suggests, doesn’t require any physical contact between the buyer’s smartphone or credit card and the POS terminal. You might also have heard the term NFC, which stands for “near field communication.” It’s the technology that powers contactless payments through a type of radio frequency identification (called RFID). NFC transactions take place over a specific radio frequency that enables the card or smartphone to communicate with the payment reader when they’re close together (usually 10 centimeters or less).Contactless payment technology - A Brief HistoryNFC is a type of radio frequency identification (or RFID) technology that allows us to identify things through radio waves. RFID is nothing new—it’s been used for decades for things like scanning items in grocery stores and luggage on baggage claims, and tagging cattle. It’s now increasingly being used to enable contactless mobile payments (and also in video game technology).What is a contactless payment card?Some debit and credit cards have NFC technology that allows the customer to pay for items by tapping or waving their card above the payments reader. These types of cards are called contactless payments cards.Why are contactless payments so secure?It’s become the norm to use apps for everything from ordering takeout to booking spin classes, but as a consumer, you might be leery of using your phone to make purchases. Well, you shouldn’t be, and here’s why: Contactless payments are actually a lot more secure than magnetic-stripe cards, whose incredibly outdated technology makes them relatively easy to clone. This means that you can end up the victim of fraudulent charges and identity theft. Contactless payments are authenticated payments, meaning they’re really hard to hack. In a contactless payment, the data associated with your credit card on file is encrypted and constantly changing. So even if fraudsters were to hack a system, the data they found there would be useless.What are the different types of contactless payment?Perhaps the most talked-about example of contactless payment is Apple Pay. It works on the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and the Apple Watch, which are all equipped with NFC technology. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus also have Apple’s fingerprint technology, Touch ID, so even if your phone is stolen, no one can access the credit cards stored in your app. To make a purchase with Apple Pay, just wait until the light on the payments the reader turns on, and then hold your device up to it with your finger on the Touch ID button.To enable Apple Pay at your store, you’ll need to invest in a reader. The Square contactless and chip reader accepts both Apple Pay and EMV cards.With that said, below are our top 6 best mobile payment appPayPal One Touch. PayPal offers its One Touch Mobile Cash Money App & Virtual Wallet app. ...Apple Pay. Apple Pay is a payment app that works with Apple devices. ...Venmo. ...Zelle. ...Square Cash. ...Google Pay.Top NFC Payment Apps For Contactless Transactions20 Mar. 2019Mobile AppNear Field Communication Apps or NFC payment apps are getting more traction with enormous appreciation since the past few years. This innovative payment mechanism has garnered immense popularity in the Asian and European region. Also, it is now even expanding to the North America region. NFC payment encryption innovation turns your smartphone into a secure and convenient means of payment. It has transformed the way users received data, make installments, and share information across devices.Read on as this article highlights some of the most recent NFC apps, along with their benefits and their offered level of security.Some Trends:Apple Pay on the iPhone, Google Pay for Android and Samsung Pay are some of the favorite touch and pay apps.Payment methods such as MasterCard PayPass and Visa payWave allow customers to pay by just flashing their card in front of the POS terminal.Interestingly, paying with a contactless payment card takes an average of 12.5 seconds. It is almost three times faster than cash payment, with an average time of 33.7 seconds, according to First Data.But, How Does NFC Work?NFC is short-range wireless communication technology. It allows the exchange of data between two remote devices up to about 10 cm. Major credit card networks, like Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, back it. Therefore, the payment works much like our credit and payment cards but with the use of the mobile device. To pay at the cash desk of any store, it would be enough to put the phone near the reader to record the payment.It is an extension of the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) standard, which combines a smart card and a reader within a single device. Unlike QR-Codes and barcodes, RFID chips are not “read or decoded,” but real communication is engaged between devices. However, it is vital to ensure that the phone has built-in NFC technology and it is enabled for use (just as you activate your Bluetooth network).Most Secure And Reliable NFC Payment Apps In The Market TodayApple PayIntroduced in 2014, the app is available for use on iPhone 6 and later versions (iPhone SE included), iPad (iPad mini 3 or iPad Air 2 and later) and Apple Watch that allows customers to pay “contactless” in-store. It uses the same validation system as your credit card, except the fact that it is on your device. The Touch ID function offers increased security. With its contactless payment app, Apple introduces tokenization – a first – that finally avoids the theft of credit card numbers. Further, with tokenization, the iPhone does not transmit the card number, but a token, which the merchant then communicates to card issuers. With this system, even if an attacker steals the token from the merchant’s payment system, they will not be able to obtain the card information that is safe from the card issuer.Google PayThe counterpart of Apple Pay on Android is Google Pay. It is also the most secure and efficient way to make payments on Android smartphones. This popular NFC payment option is compatible with all Android devices from version 5.0 Lollipop and upwards. Further, it supersedes the Google Wallet. It also offers to store a dematerialized version of your loyalty cards, air tickets, and train tickets. Google Pay provides a list of the nearest stores accepting service, displaying recent payments or the ability to send or receive money. Thanks to the advanced level of encryption with a detailed verification process, the card data is always safe with Google Pay.Samsung Paya payment system from Samsung, it is designed specifically for Samsung Galaxy smartphones. Samsung Pay is one of the best NFC payment apps due to its ease of use and security features. It uses biometric sensors of smartphones like the iris scanner and the fingerprint reader, while all the transactions are encryption protected and with Samsung http://Knox.By combining the NFC with the MST technology, Samsung Pay manages to work even with POS that are not yet contactless-enabled. In addition to credit and debit cards, loyalty cards can also be stored on this application. Interestingly, according to a forecast by Berg Insight, the installed base of NFC-ready POS terminal units will increase to 112.3 million by 2022 globally. Learn more about how POS solutions help retailers to keep track of their sales, customer transactions, inventory management, and supply chain operations.PayPal Mobile is an NFC app developed by Paypal. It allows users to manage their money in a faster, and secure manner. Also, this is without the hassle of providing your bank details for each transaction. It works seamlessly for both Android and iOS.The free applications also enable sending cash to companions in the US and the rest of the world using your bank or PayPal balance. PayPal notifications allow seamless discovery of sent and spent money. By activating the “One Touch” function, the interaction from one site to another is accessible without having to re-enter the banking data or reconnect to the PayPal account. However, before activating this, make sure your smartphone, tablet, or computer is protected, and only you use it.Visa payWaveVisa payWave is a convenient and secure payment technology that can read and receive your credit card information. This technology allows you to pay for your purchases quickly and securely at institutions that accept the Visa payWave card. This contactless payment app uses an integrated computer chip to send the payment information to a secure point-of-sale reader. Visa contactless transactions are just as safe as transactions with magnetic tapes and get processed by the same reliable payment network. The control over the payment device lowers the fraud risk.MasterCard PayPassPayPass technology is a payment feature included with MasterCard, at no additional cost. This NFC tap and pay option allow users to pay for purchases at merchants who have a PayPass terminal. The user card or smartphone is always with them, and electronic encryption is unique for every payment. It protects the data, reducing the risk of loss or theft of your card. Also, an automatic check ensures that there is no payment duplication with an accidental touch to the player.It concludes our comprehensive yet non-exhaustive list of dependable NFC mobile payment apps available in 2019. With the increasing use of contactless payment methods, it is necessary that businesses take into consideration of NFC for the developed applications. The inclusion of tap and pay apps allow organizations to offer an additional innovative payment option to the users of their business functionality. Further, it is high time to adapt to this trend that will help acquire adequate global coverage. Rishabh Software has the required proficiency with cross-platform app development teams. Our experts can seamlessly integrate the NFC payment solutions across platforms.

tl;dr Because iPhones just work and the “rich” Android ecosystem doesn’t offer that.Divided LoyaltiesI’ve been an on-again, off-again user of Android and iPhone so I’ve lived both worlds. My phone has nearly always been an iPhone while my primary mobile device for the past two years has been a Sony Xperia E4.A few weeks ago I decided to take the plunge into going exclusively Android with a Samsung Galaxy S5 16 GB.My partner wanted to go the opposite direction from a Nexus to an iPhone. I got her an iPhone 6 which I used for one week because my iPhone 4S’ battery had finally failed.That one week taste of what iOS 6 was like change my perspective on iOS. Suddenly I got to see what the latest iOS was like on “modern” (i.e 2014) hardware. At first I didn’t like it. The lack of a back button was annoying.But, very quickly I discovered that every iOS app supports left- and right-swipe to go forward and backward. The lack of a back button became irrelevant. It took me less than two days to get used to using left- and right-swipe, and, guess what, it really works!After that one week with the iPhone 6, switching to the S5 full time has been unpleasant, to say the least.Android 6 is a poorly thought out, disorganized and buggy operating system compared to the elegant simplicity of iOS. And, I don’t think you can blame much of it on Samsung because it’s also Google’s apps that suffer from the same disorganization and bloat. Part of it stems from the fake customizability of Android. Because people can just replace things like the launcher there’s little incentive for OEMs to make truly good software. Which means everyone makes so-so software :(.Yes, the S5 has a back button, but, now that I got used to left- and right-swipe I really, really miss that swipe gesture in Android 6.I figured that every touch OS had swipe because even Windows 10 has implemented that gesture in Edge to navigate forward and backwards through a page.Nope. The only web browser on Android that supports swipe is UC Browser. Not FireFox. Not Chrome. Not Samsung Browser. Not Opera. Really?!?! One of the most stunningly easy ways to navigate a mobile browser and Android browsers don’t support it. They don’t do ANYTHING with left- and right-swipe. Nothing. Nada. Zilch!And, it’s not just Safari that supports the left- and right-swipe gestures to navigate in iOS. Pretty much every other iOS app seems to support that way of navigating.That’s Apple’s attention to detail. And, crucially, that’s also the attention to detail that third parties pay to their apps. That’s a quality that’s always set Apple’s OSes and hardware apart from competitors (e.g. Mac vs. Windows back in the day).Advertising and BloatOEM Android is also riddled with click-bait news, advertising and bloat and is extremely heavy handed in what you can and cannot do with your device (unless you have an extremely high level of technical proficiency and jail break or install AOSP on the few devices that support AOSP or a jail break). It’s quite difficult, if not impossible to disable the click-bait news without also disabling basic functionality.Not so in iOS. Click-bait news will get your app deleted so you don’t make it impossible to turn off.Yes, I know every Fandroid in existence claims Apple is the epitome of Big Brother but they’ve likely not spent time using both OSes and are satisfied hating the enemy because, well, they’re the enemy.SimplicityI like a clean, simple look to my home screen. I also like very few apps on my device overall.I like the Google Now Launcher. In theory it’s simple. I like the information cards on the left-hand screen. It’s one of the best launchers I’ve encountered in terms of smoothness of operation and choice in graphics.Only problem, it has two big fatal flaws. One, it has click-bait news that cannot be turned off. I will not subject myself to click-bait news. Life is too short to read all that nonsensical crap. Second, it has the Google search bar EVERYWHERE and you cannot remove it. That destroys the potential elegant simplicity of the Google Now Launcher.Despite Android much vaunted customisability there is not one launcher in the Play Store that meets my needs. Google’s launcher with the bloat! So much for “choice” if all the choice is bad. I’ve settled on Microsoft’s launcher. It’s not a great solution but it’s the best of the bad. I don’t like using “third party” stuff. Coming from Apple you’re used to the OEM providing the best of the best. That’s definitely not the case on Android :(.Apple allows you to keep a clean, simple home screen. No search bar. No forced Siri. Apple also doesn’t require you to subject yourself to click-bait news. Yes, by default it appeared in their left-hand screen, but, a simple settings change turned it off! Everyone and their dog in Android seems to be using the forced click-bait news as an advertising revenue tool generator nowadays.I’d happily PAY not to have click-bait news in my Google launcher but that doesn’t seem to be an option. Google will advertise to you even if you would like to pay them not to.Saving SpaceThe latest iOS allows you to free up space by removing nearly every single “stock” application. If you want to you can be left with a device that has only SEVEN apps installed. And, with two exceptions—Wallet and Health IIRC—they are apps that provide the very basic functionality of a smart phone so it kind of makes sense that you can’t remove them (Safari, iMessage, Camera, Settings, App Store).Try that on any non-rooted OEM version of Android. I’ve never seen it done in the wild.Google’s apps are never uninstallable and often can’t even be disabled. And, usually the OEM provides a litany of useless apps of their own. For example, Samsung provides their own apps for pretty much everything and they’re not good. The fact that Samsung is the leading Android manufacturer speaks to the low quality of Android software.iOS will now even off-load rarely used apps to the cloud to save you space. If you have a 16 GB iPhone iOS will take care of saving space for you if you let it! I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that feature.Long term supportMy partner and I are running 2014 era flagship phones from Apple and Samsung. My S5 received its last security update ever in early 2017. Support is done unless you have a high degree of technical skill and don’t care about losing access to hardware features of your device by installing an alternate version of Android. Plus, your device just happens to have to support that alternate version (which most don’t).My partner’s iPhone 6 is running the latest OS and will likely have at least two more years of security and feature updates.iOS look goodPeople rave about Samsung’s TouchWiz. It looks great. It’s smooth. Nonsense. TouchWiz on a 2014 Galaxy S5 looks like an amateur hack job when set beside iOS running on a 2014 iPhone 6. Same era hardware. Profoundly different experiences.iPhones increase their relative valueThe Galaxy S5 and the iPhone 6 sold for approximately the same price when they came out in 2014. They were direct competitors. Now, 3.5 years later, the iPhone 6 consistently fetches over $100 more than the Galaxy S5 on the used market, and, the S5 used market on Kijiji was full of fraudsters while the iPhone 6 market was pretty clean (likely has something to do with the fact that a stolen iPhone 6 is 100% useless since the owner can lock it in iTunes whereas Google/Samsung offer no such service).A similar story applies to less well known Android brands. I looked at the LG G4. A nice piece of hardware that’s a year newer than the iPhone 6 and Galaxy S5. It sold for a little more than the S5 but you still needed an absolutely mint G4 to hope to get prices that were similar to what you could fetch for a beat up iPhone 6.PS I have never bought a new phone :).Why am I with Android?I wanted to try it out and I liked the camera on the S5.I’m not a huge fan of the iPhone 6 form factor and all the other phones Apple makes are either too big or too small for my tastes. I’ll see how it goes. If replacing Samsung Android with LineageOS doesn’t change my experience of Android I suppose I’ll throw in the towel and get myself an iPhone 6. It too has a good camera, and, at least it has an OS that simply “gets out of the way”.PS I couldn’t care a less if I use Safari or Chrome or whatever as my browser as long as I’m not subjected to click-bait news (and, now that I remember, Chrome itself is riddled with click-bait news… you have to change an internal setting and do just the right rain dance to get click-bait news maybe turned off).

Don't do payments! OK well if you insist, then I respect that, but seriously, don't enter into it lightly. Payments is very hard to do right, and it's not for faint of heart nor the faint of stamina. I also think that it's not for the arrogant. The list of payments startup roadkill is way, way longer than the list of ... not roadkill.As a starting point, you'll want to have a well thought-through answer to all of the following questions about your payment service. Don't skip any of them! I would highly recommend going through this exercise thoroughly before you incorporate and get rolling with your venture.Who are the transacting parties payor and payee) that your service will enable? Basic categories are 'c2c' (consumer to consumer) 'b2c' (business to consumer), 'g2c' (government to consumer), 'b2b' (business to business), and 'g2b' (government to business).What clearing and settlement institutions (sometimes called "Rails") will your service use? This depends on the basic payment methods you want to enable. Typical options in the US include the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed) for ACH and check transactions, Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover (the card brands or "schemes" as Europeans call them) for credit and debit card transactions, the ATM switches like NYCE and Star for ATM transactions, the money transfer companies like Western Union and MoneyGram for remittances, and SWIFT for international wire transfers. Also, if Bitcoins are part of your service, then maybe one of the Bitcoin exchanges. There are tons of these and I don't know squat about Bitcoins, so I won't try to list them ... just Google 'bitcoin exchange USA'. (Note to the fearless: you say your startup involves disrupting The Rails? Aiming to take out MasterCard and Visa? Remove banks from the equation? I would sincerely love to see you succeed, but I'm not investing in your company ... I'll squander my hard-earned dollars in Vegas first).In addition to the payor, payee, The Rails and yourself (we'll call you the 'platform'), who are the other parties in your payment ecosystem who are needed to make a transaction happen? Some possible examples: retailers, wholesalers, agents, billers, payment gateways, banks, telcos, wallet aggregators (like Apple or Google).Who are the 'technical layer' providers in your ecosystem who are needed to enable transactions: software vendors or outsourcers, not just for your core platform but for basic peripheral processes like customer support, fraud and anti-money laundering risk management, etc. For end users there's the whole PC/tablet/smartphone/wearable device technology stack ... smart cards, contactless cards, and mag stripe cards all have their own stack as well. iBeacons and other new goodies are on the way to add to the complexity. If you're in the retail space, your list might include point of sale technology vendors like VeriFone or Ingenico, eCommerce website vendors like Magento or WebSphere (IBM), or hybrid technology and service providers like PayPal or Square. Lastly, you'll likely need a hosting provider for this whole mess.What non-payment players, if any, do you want to partner with as an integral part of your service? For example: loyalty programs, couponing programs, gaming or entertainment companies, etc.What regulations, laws, standards, and operating rules does your payment service fall under? This will largely be determined by the Rails on which you build your service, because they all have their own sets of rules and procedures. For example, each of the payment card brands have their own unique requirements for every facet of how transactions are conducted ... and collectively as an industry they have standards like PCI and EMV as well. Even though they aren't the government, the card brands are de facto regulators, so you have to treat them as such. In addition, and just as importantly, there are federal and state regulations and legislation. And if you're supporting international transactions, then you'll need to comply with the requirements for each country that you'll be involved in as well. Note that these are often different, in a very detailed sense, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. To help you navigate all this, you will NEED a top notch payments industry lawyer. Don't try to save money by doing this on your own, because a slip up here, even a seemingly minor one, can cause you massive heartburn or even business failure down the road.OK now here's where the real fun starts. For all of the above parties that are in your extended ecosystem as described above, what are you going to offer them that's compellingly better than the way they do it today? Not just better, but COMPELLINGLY better, in all-caps. Bear in mind that none of them need you ... in a lot of players' minds (incorrectly in a lot of cases, but it doesn't matter) the payments business model work just fine, and the industry is full of vested interests with more cash than they can shake a stick at. They will do their best to squash your budding venture like a bug if they see anything that remotely resembles an existential threat coming their way. Well maybe they'll buy you out, but I wouldn't, err, 'bank' on that happening. But I know you're undeterred because you're going to bring them the best thing since Swiss Cheese, so let's press on. So for commercial players in your ecosystem (for example, retailers and banks), you will want to entice them each with a positive business case, which means enhanced revenues or market share, or lower costs, plus a swit ROI for any investments in infrastructure that they might have to make. Bear in mind that increased revenues for one player means increased costs for someone else. Everyone in the game will need a positive business case ... you can't rob from Peter to pay Paul. Commercial ecosystem players are the easiest though, being financially driven. Consumers are much, much harder to change. They don't need you either. Consumers are creatures of habit, and unless they're still very young, they already have their payment habits burned in. Especially American consumers: in 2014 there are still people in the US who write checks for their groceries and stand in line at the bank on the last day of the month to cash their paychecks. Lots of them. I'm not making this up. To win consumers over, I believe what you need is to look at how people pay for things today (with close attention to their demographics) and give them something that is simpler AND faster AND safer AND cheaper than that. Note the use of 'AND' (all-caps), and not 'or', in the preceding sentence ... you have to nail every single one of these. It's not impossible, but the odds of succeeding are slim indeed. Remember, they don't need you. Well, Apple might have pulled it off with Apple Pay. We'll see ... time will tell.Are you pushing a technology? Or something that adds true value, as described above. Be brutally honest with yourself ... if you’re pushing a mega cool technology and the pan-ecosystem business case isn't there, and/or the consumer proposition isn't there (if applicable), your audience is going to be geeks, which will get you toasted at microbreweries in Silicon Valley and Austin, but won't turn you into the next PayPal.Who are your competitors? You don't have any? Yes, you do. Dig deeper. Your competitor might not be another company - it might be another form of payment. It's very seldom that a new payment method actually creates new economic activity that didn't happen before (although mPesa may have done that in Kenya, and in-app purchases seem to be a completely new market). More likely you'll manage (if successful) to displace transactions that were already going to happen, from another payment method to yours. Another point about competition where other players are concerned: don't just look at who's not doing your thing now ... look at who could be doing it if they chose to. If you have something awesome but no effective barriers to entry, you're not going to own the world. Payments is an economy of scale business, so to make it big you basically need to own the world. Look at all the Square copycats who came out of the woodwork ... they're all over the place. And with all due respect to Jack Ma, AliPay sure does look a lot like PayPal. Patents will help, but only to a point. Bonus points if nobody can reverse-engineer you.How will you secure your payment service against cyber attacks, fraud, and money laundering? You're guaranteed to have those: you're in the business of moving money, and where there's money, there's crime. It always astounds me when I see payment startups cutting corners on risk management, and so many of them do. Securing your payment service is very challenging, to be sure. It goes back to the consumer discussion on balancing usability with simplicity and cost. It also goes back to the compliance discussion (privacy laws, PCI, etc.). By the way, don't make the all-too common mistake of confusing compliance with security ... they are not the same thing. You can easily be compliant and not secure (like Target was). Lastly, securing your payment service goes back to the profitability discussion, because security is an overhead, and doing it right isn't cheap. You'll pay significantly for good security - there's no way around that. Thing is, without it, you're sunk. Check how the rock stars of the payments industry - Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and the others - are obsessive about security. It's part of their brand DNA, and it's not a coincidence that they're payments headliners. Security begets trust, and trust is the lifeblood of the payments industry.Have you planned for all the things that might go wrong, or just non-normally, with your payment transactions? Everyone plans for the 'happy' scenario where all works as planned, but fewer take the time and effort up front to work out in detail how they'll handle exceptions. There are many of those: reversals, refunds, disputes between payor and payee, fraud, and service interruptions are just a few examples. Regulatory compliance is also a big factor here. Getting exception management right will have a major effect on your financial bottom line, as well as market trust in your payment service.Are you expecting to break even, pay your investors back and retire to Bali in a couple of years? Give it seven to ten, minimum. Payments is a marathon, not a sprint, especially in the consumer space. I always roll my eyes when I see the media questioning why Square isn't profitable yet, or why the whole USA hasn't moved over to NFC yet after they've been available for what, 3-4 years. Even Apple Pay (and I'm a big fan) is going to take a long time, measured in years, to become a dominant payment form, if indeed it succeeds in doing that at all.If you've read all the way here to the end, thanks for staying with me. Did I succeed in scaring you off? If not, then I wish you good luck and godspeed. There is a lot wrong with payments and it's easy to find something to fix. What's not so easy is to do it in a way that's sustainably profitable, and the more of the ecosystem you cover, the more complicated it is. That said, every successfully commercial player in the payments space, every payments rock star, was a startup once.