The title of the articlein Business Insider is “This Tiny Metal Coil Has The Power to Change MobilePayments And Become Bigger Than Apple Pay.”
“Themetal coil shown here doesn’t look like much. Just some looped copper.
Butif you run an alternating current through it, the coil will produce a magneticfield. And if you create the right kind of magnetic field, the coil cancommunicate with a standard credit card reader.
That’show LoopPay works.
LoopPayis a mobile payments startup that lets you load your credit cards into an accessory,like a smartphone case or dongle, and make payments just by tapping it againsta standard magnetic credit card reader.
LoopPay’stechnology can be built into a lot of things like keychain fobs, dongles, andsmartphone cases. The company just launched a new case that fits the iPhone 6and formed a partnership with some third-party case makers for other devices.
Butthe real exciting prospect for LoopPay is that it can also be embedded directlyinto smartphones, offering handset makers their own answer to Apple Pay. (ApplePay doesn’t work with standard credit card readers, only special NFC paymentpads.)”
It’s this last paragraph that jumps from what is, to whatmight be. If indeed this coil can besnuck into a phone with its accompanying circuitry and attendant power needs,then it will indeed change the face of mobile payments and shift the battlebetween merchants and payment networks over NFC hardware enablement.
So the primary question is “can Loop Pay be shrunk to thesize needed to operate within the existing smartphone footprint and retain thepower needed to maintain its broad acceptance footprint?” Add tokenization and it’s a real game changerif it can!
Overview by Tim Sloane, VP Payments Innovation for Mercator Advisory Group
Read fulls story at Business Insider