Apple Could Finally Adopt NFC On iPhone For Mobile Payment Plans And Touch ID

Apple’s 2014 roadmap was laid out in pretty considerable detail by KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo earlier this week in an investor note, and while ordinarily analyst predictions aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, Kuo has a solid track record of actually getting things right. Among Kuo’s predictions are larger iPhones, a Retina MacBook Air, improved Apple TV, iPad with Touch ID and iWatch launch later this year. But one small detail could have more potential impact than all the rest: NFC inclusion in iWatch and iPhone devices.

Apple has never thought much of NFC, at least when it comes to its own devices, and has avoided building the communication tech into its gadgets for years while the Android competition turned it into a device default. NFC had a lot of early buzz, but for the most part, its usefulness for the average person comes in its ability to act as a handshake tech to ease the process of Bluetooth pairing. It still has some utility as a mobile payments transfer tech, but even with mobile payment options built into Android phones that support it, it hasn’t taken off in that regard.

If Apple starts building NFC into its devices, as Kuo reports it will, that could all change. While Apple now offers iBeacons Bluetooth LE-based tech, which could replicate the payment functions of NFC, support for the other tech would mean broad compatibility with existing hardware that more and more merchants have now been adopting with their in-store point-of-sale systems. Both types of tech are early, but NFC has the virtue of having had longer to find its feet.

As Finextra notes, the WSJ reported earlier this year that Apple was looking to develop a mobile wallet for iPhone, using the existing iTunes accounts the company already uses for purchases within its own software and retail store ecosystem. That would give Apple an instant network of over 600 million users with credit card information on file, making it likely the largest mobile payments network of any kind without even trying. And with NFC, Touch ID could be used to authenticate those payments, or even to authenticate identify for store loyalty or other purposes, too.

Apple has previously patented tech related to NFC and mobile payments, and Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned that payments was part of what drove the inspiration behind creating Touch ID, the fingerprint-based authentication tech on the iPhone 5s. Touch ID is reportedly coming to iPad Air 2 in 2014, as well, which expands the pool of potential payments applicability even further. Apple may have seemed disdainful of NFC in the past, but it has a habit of waiting on new and emerging tech until it becomes genuinely useful to a large swath of consumers, and NFC could be just about at that point, and a key route to Apple’s domination of the mobile payments space.

LatentGesture learns your unique touch signature, keeps everyone else out

Georgia Institute of Technology

Forget passwords, PINs, security patterns, or even Face Unlock. A research team at the Georgia Institute of Technology has devised a way to let your Android device recognize you as its owner just by the way that you touch it.

Known as LatentGesture, the said system relies on your “touch signature,” which refers to your unique ways of touching and interacting with your device. When someone uses a phone, LatentGesture determines the user’s touch signature and checks whether it matches the owner’s. The system can be programmed to unlock the device if the signatures match or to keep the device locked and unusable if the signatures don’t match.

Touch habits like fingerprints

Georgia Tech College of Computing assistant professor Polo Chau likens one’s touch signature to a fingerprint. “Everyone is unique when [he/she uses] a touchscreen. Some people slide the bar with one quick swipe. Others gradually move it across the screen. Everyone taps the screen with different pressures while checking boxes,” said Professor Chau, who is also the research team’s leader.

The study done by Chau’s team used LatentGesture on Android devices. Twenty participants were asked to interact with a phone and a tablet by performing tasks listed in an electronic form. While the participants were tapping buttons, ticking check boxes, and scrolling slider bars, LatentGesture was “learning” their touch tendencies and creating a profile for each participant.

Accurate recognition

To test the system, one profile was assigned as the device owner’s. Then, the participants performed the tasks all over. LatentGesture was able to determine who was the “real” owner and marked the others as unauthorized users. The results registered a high degree of accuracy — about 98 percent on a smartphone and 97 percent on tablets.

In another test, one “owner” profile and four “authorized user” profiles were programmed into LatentGesture running on a tablet. The system was able to identify each user with 98 percent accuracy.

Multiple potential uses

Because it passively secures your Android device, LatentGesture can make smartphone or tablet use more convenient. You won’t need to worry anymore about other people seeing you type your PIN/password or figuring out the security pattern on your devices. Your touch will be enough to tell your device that it is you who are holding it and not someone else.

But not only that — LatentGesture carries a lot of other potential uses, too. For example, it can be used to distinguish between device owner and authorized users, and restrict the allowed activities of authorized non-owners while keeping unauthorized users out.

What other possible uses and advantages do you think can a technology like LatentGesture offer to Android users? If this were to become one of the standard security features on every Android device, would you prefer it to the other existing ones? Let us know what you think.

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