PANews reported on August 15 that according to Cointelegraph, Jeremy Allaire, CEO of stablecoin company Circle, said that his company is planning to launch instant payment on the iPhone after Apple opened the development of iPhone secure payment chips to third-party developers. In a statement on August 14, Apple said it would open the use of its NFC chips and secure elements (SE) to third-party application developers, paving the way for crypto developers to integrate blockchain-based payment functions on Apple devices.
In a follow-up post on X, Allaire explained that before Apple made its move, the only payment feature that could use NFC on the iPhone was Apple's own Wallet app and Apple Pay. "This would allow (a point of sale) to tell the iPhone which blockchain address it will accept USDC from, or the amount to be paid," Allaire said. "The iPhone-based Wallet app could then prompt the user to confirm the payment (such as using FaceID) and initiate a transaction over the blockchain to settle the USDC. Combine this with high-performance and low-fee blockchain networks, and this would open up a powerful way to pay USDC directly to merchants."
In addition, Alar explained that Apple's opening up access to its NFC chip will apply to "many things" beyond USDC, including NFTs for tickets, other certificates, and other stablecoins like EURC. Notably, Apple said these APIs will be available to developers in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, but did not mention the European Union and its 27 member states.
