Apple Passbook card-’n'-ticket app paves way for iOS e-wallet
Apple's Passbook, announced at yesterday's developer conference as part of iOS 6, is clearly a step towards 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.
Passbook is like an address book for storing tokens and tickets, with associated machine-readable barcodes and geographic hotspots. The tickets are presented to the user with a consistent interface, and integrated into the lock screen for automatic display where needed, but Apple will only display static tickets: thus locking out the barcode-based e-tickets proving so popular on the UK train network.
Barcode ticketing is old news, and a handful of smartphone applications are already dispensing with paper to display the black-and-white codes on screen. Ticket gates in London's Kings Cross and Euston stations, along the Birmingham line, and elsewhere in the UK already feature integrated readers poised to scan smartphone screens. Read more...