Earlier this week Apple made a big splash in the mCommerce arena, announcing Apple Pay: an NFC mobile wallet that can authorize physical and online credit card payments through the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch.
Sure enough, the Internet lit up with first impression reports, some praising Apple’s bold move and others raising a few questions about the finer details of how it operates.
Phillip Dunkelberger, CEO of Nok Nok Labs, made a statement on Tuesday placing him firmly in the former camp, stating that Apple has taken a step in the right direction, addressing major concerns in the mobile commerce arena.
“We see today’s move by Apple as a significant step in the right direction towards modernizing online payments and addressing a major problem in today’s payment ecosystem using authentication as a key building block,” said Dunkelberger. “The last twelve months have seen acceleration in investments in mobile commerce and payments powered by strong and simple authentication and we expect Apple’s activities to add to the momentum.”
He continued: “We embrace Apple’s (and other payment ecosystems’) values and commitment in allowing their customers to strongly authenticate in a simple and secure fashion. Just as Apple has previously been a leader in driving the market for mobile applications, they are now in a position to allow their customers to conveniently and securely shop online – embracing the values that we and the FIDO Alliance have been espousing for the past three years. Fingerprint sensors like Apple Touch ID are lowering the friction for users to make secure online payments more conveniently and securely.”
Dunkelberger went on to speak about a need to address authentication problems on an even broader scale.
“We need to focus on delivering a method that allows access to all online resources easily and securely, whether we are using an iPhone, an Android device, or a Windows PC,” he said. “Only a unified approach, that supports all of the device manufacturers, operating systems, browsers, payment ecosystems, applications and authentication technologies, can meet the requirements of the modern computing age whether the particular need is for a secure online payment or accessing a medical record.”
Nok Nok Labs is a founding member of the FIDO Alliance. Earlier this year, with the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S5, co-founder PayPal announced its support of the flagship smartphone’s fingerprint sensor, allowing for online biometric payments.
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