Apple wants to help you pay for your drinks

THE CAPPUCCINO COMPANY Apple is chancing its hand at a mobile peer-to-peer micropayment service, according to recent patent filings.

Its "near field communication" (NFC) interface promises to let Iphone users make payment transactions. The interface also leaves the door open for applications to use the Iphone's camera to scan invoices and incorporate biometric recognition.

Once the amount to be paid is ascertained, the payment authorisation will use either 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth or NFC to first gain authorisation for the payment and, ultimately, take the money from the user's designated account. The filing also describes various biometric methods for data entry, including a fingerprint scanner. The digit based authentication can be used to sign off on a payment.

Those with tin-foil hats will no doubt be up in arms about having their privacy violated, but one has to assume that not even Apple will be silly enough to come out with a half-baked solution when failure will almost certainly result in all but the most ignorant fanboi leaving the cult.

Given that Apple's Itunes and App stores have yet to suffer a major breach of security, it would suggest that Steve Jobs realises that unlike the Iphone OS, his firm's micro payment solutions need to work.

Actually, Apple's peer-to-peer payment patent is a rare example of the firm doing something that is both useful and technologically impressive. Over in Japan, mobile phones have been used for micropayments for some time now but that has yet to catch on in the Western hemisphere.

Whereas the Japanese transition was made easier thanks to a new barcode scheme that was easy to recognise, even by poor quality mobile phone cameras, start-ups such as Square have had to grapple with our unswerving tendency to resist any change. Therefore it's no surprise that Apple's proposed solution might seem like an invasion of privacy but, in truth, if we want the convenience then approaches like this one proposed by Jobs' Mob could be the only way to go about it. That is of course unless you want to be old skool and use cold hard cash.

The patent filing, originally submitted back in November 2009, was made public recently and has yet to be granted. Apple has presumably used that time not only to hone its marketing techniques but also to ensure that user security and some semblance of privacy will be maintained. µ