In what’s being heralded as an unneeded and late move, Apple, filed a patent for digital currency and communication similar to NFC to pay at retailers. Slashdot<\a> broke the story this morning saying:
Apple has applied for a patent on a combined virtual currency and digital wallet technology that would allow you to store money in the cloud, make payments with your iPhone, and maybe communicate with point-of-sale terminals via NFC. The patent application, published [Thursday] by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Organization, details how iPhone users could walk into a store, pay for goods with their phone, and walk out with their merchandise. Though Apple is late to the virtual wallet game, that doesn’t seem to stop them trying to patent the process. There does not appear to be anything in the patent application which describes something that can’t already be done.
During Mondays conference I’m sure well hear about iOS7’s integration of iCoins(see what I did there). Maybe Apple can compete with the multitude of solutions out there, but I wonder if their patent will change anything.