4 ms·

PayPal brings NFC money transfers to Android, starting with Nexus S

37 points by jamesjyu 15y ago

cullenking 15y ago
A friend of mine was involved with the dev process. Apparently, bump is a major PITA on Android, as in, works terribly.
- wcoenen 15y ago
  This is pretty vague. Do you mean that they had trouble interpreting the accelerometer data to detect bumps?
  - cullenking 15y ago
    The success rate during their dev process was around 5%. Read the reviews in the android market - the one with people saying "only connected once out of at least 20 tries" are just about spot on.
kgrin 15y ago
Not quite ironic, but interesting: IIRC from Founders at Work, mobile payments was PayPal's first focus - it was only when that didn't really pan out that they said "hey, maybe web payments can be a thing too!" Fun to see it come around full circle...
- wmf 15y ago
  That's why "this has failed before" isn't a good heuristic; a lot of ideas that failed in previous decades are now viable due to changes in technology or society.
zmmmmm 15y ago
I wonder how hard it would be to turn this into a POS technology? Seems like if you just taped a Nexus S to the counter it would be almost there and you would be doing direct PayPal transactions with your customers.
- wmf 15y ago
  I suspect Mastercard PayPass has lower fees than PayPal. (With the usual caveat of higher upfront.)
  - rdl 15y ago
    Yeah, the current best system is to buy a ViVOtech NFC/RFID reader for your existing POS and just use PayPass. (disclaimer: I worked for ViVO back in 2003 on NFC security stuff). Integration costs with the POS are probably a bigger cost than anything else for most merchants. What IMO has largely doomed this technology, except for transit, tolls, etc., is the change to card association policy where now you don't need to sign for magstripe transactions under a certain amount. The purpose behind NFC vs. stripe+sign was always to speed up the checkout, and the printed receipt (or pad) and signature is the slow part. For tolls, you still want something beefier RF-wise than the normal NFC, because you need to work through glass and steel. Transit is usually a declining-balance purse system, not realtime credit card, and is a single closed app. And of course the big chicken and egg problem of readers vs. cards (and user awareness). Loyalty might be a better app for NFC than payment (especially for the kind of things where you don't make a financial transaction, similar to checkins at venues), but QR codes might work just as well there, or GPS + smartphone app.
    - wmf 15y ago
      Is NFC not treated the same as a swipe? It should be (slightly) more secure since the cloning equipment is scarcer.
      - rdl 15y ago
        Very similar to swipe, but with different back office processing and limits. It is better security in some ways so they were willing to allow no signature transactions. It still hasnt taken off in the USA, but check out jack in the box drivethrough and such for the readers.
        15y ago

37 points by jamesjyu 15y ago

cullenking 15y ago

A friend of mine was involved with the dev process. Apparently, bump is a major PITA on Android, as in, works terribly.

wcoenen 15y ago
This is pretty vague. Do you mean that they had trouble interpreting the accelerometer data to detect bumps?
- cullenking 15y ago
  The success rate during their dev process was around 5%. Read the reviews in the android market - the one with people saying "only connected once out of at least 20 tries" are just about spot on.

kgrin 15y ago

Not quite ironic, but interesting: IIRC from Founders at Work, mobile payments was PayPal's first focus - it was only when that didn't really pan out that they said "hey, maybe web payments can be a thing too!" Fun to see it come around full circle...

wmf 15y ago
That's why "this has failed before" isn't a good heuristic; a lot of ideas that failed in previous decades are now viable due to changes in technology or society.

zmmmmm 15y ago

I wonder how hard it would be to turn this into a POS technology? Seems like if you just taped a Nexus S to the counter it would be almost there and you would be doing direct PayPal transactions with your customers.

wmf 15y ago
I suspect Mastercard PayPass has lower fees than PayPal. (With the usual caveat of higher upfront.)
- rdl 15y ago
  Yeah, the current best system is to buy a ViVOtech NFC/RFID reader for your existing POS and just use PayPass. (disclaimer: I worked for ViVO back in 2003 on NFC security stuff). Integration costs with the POS are probably a bigger cost than anything else for most merchants. What IMO has largely doomed this technology, except for transit, tolls, etc., is the change to card association policy where now you don't need to sign for magstripe transactions under a certain amount. The purpose behind NFC vs. stripe+sign was always to speed up the checkout, and the printed receipt (or pad) and signature is the slow part. For tolls, you still want something beefier RF-wise than the normal NFC, because you need to work through glass and steel. Transit is usually a declining-balance purse system, not realtime credit card, and is a single closed app. And of course the big chicken and egg problem of readers vs. cards (and user awareness). Loyalty might be a better app for NFC than payment (especially for the kind of things where you don't make a financial transaction, similar to checkins at venues), but QR codes might work just as well there, or GPS + smartphone app.
  - wmf 15y ago
    Is NFC not treated the same as a swipe? It should be (slightly) more secure since the cloning equipment is scarcer.
    - rdl 15y ago
      Very similar to swipe, but with different back office processing and limits. It is better security in some ways so they were willing to allow no signature transactions. It still hasnt taken off in the USA, but check out jack in the box drivethrough and such for the readers.
      - 15y ago