As widely expected, the new iPhone 5S will feature a fingerprint sensor on the home button, along with a faster processor and more colors–but no NFC.

Apple today unveiled its new flagship device, the follow-up to its iPhone 5, along with a second, cheaper, model, the iPhone 5C. Both will go on sale Sept. 20 in nine countries, including the U.S., Japan and China.

The iPhone 5S will feature what Apple calls Touch ID, a fingerprint identity sensor built into the home button, the result of its $350 million acquisition last year of U.S.-based Authentec’s Smart Sensor Solutions unit.

Consumers can use the sensor to unlock their phones and even to make purchases in Apple’s iTunes store, replacing the passwords they enter now.

But Apple is not supporting any new payment technology at the physical point of sale with its new devices, despite the perennial rumors it would.

And it didn’t mention its not-too-popular Passbook wallet app today, just as it failed to bring up the wallet at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, when it introduced its latest mobile operating system, iOS 7, which runs on the new devices. Passbook, introduced last year, supports bar-code based nonpayment applications in the physical world, such as loyalty, couponing and ticketing.

While there was speculation in publications as recently as this week, in part based on patent requests, that Apple would combine the fingerprint sensor technology with NFC–to allow for more secure synching and pairing of devices, as well as access control and possibly physical-world payment–there was no mention of synching at all today. And the only mention of payment was replacing passwords with the fingerprint sensor for network-based iTunes transactions.

For NFC backers, the latest snub by Apple means they will have to wait for next year’s version of the consumer electronics giant’s flagship phone, which could bring more substantial changes than the 5S.

But while nine of the top 10 smartphone makers support NFC, Apple’s continued resistance to the technology will rankle backers because it will likely result in many service providers continuing to hold off on launching NFC applications. A substantial percentage of their customers carry iPhones.

There are NFC-enabled iPhone attachments on the market, but the latest versions of these add-ons often hit the market nearly a year after the new iPhone they are designed to work with are available to consumers. The delays are caused in large part by the need for the device makers to gain certification from payment schemes and from Apple itself.

Major mobile operators supporting NFC may not be so broken up by Apple’s pass on the technology for another year, since any implementation of NFC by the tech giant might not have supported NFC on SIM cards.

Telcos still have Samsung Electronics, Sony and other Android, as well as Windows Phone and BlackBerry phone makers supporting standard NFC on SIMs. Samsung and some other phone makers are also enabling payment applications on embedded secure elements in their devices in certain markets

The NFC infrastructure still is not widely rolled out, which may have put Apple off. And standard NFC is not a technology Apple can easily control for its own purposes and within its own ecosystem. For example, Apple uses proprietary technology it calls AirDrop for peer-to-peer syncing among its devices, mainly using Wi-Fi to transmit the content.

Meanwhile, Apple’s new iPhone models introduced today offer no new breakthrough features.

While fingerprint sensors have been available on phones for years, including those in Japan, Apple claims that with Touch ID, the system gets better at reading prints every time it’s used. And Touch ID can read multiple prints, allowing the phone’s owner to enable others to use the device.

The ultra-thin sensor, in effect, takes an image of the user’s finger in the sub-epidermal layers of his skin. The home button is made of laser-cut sapphire crystal, which focuses the sensor on fingerprint. The button is surrounded by a stainless steel detection ring on top of the sensor.

All fingerprint information is encrypted and stored inside a “secure enclave,” in the 5S’ A7 processor chip. “Here, it is locked away from everything else, accessible only by the Touch ID sensor, ”Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president for hardware engineering, said in a video “It’s never available to other software, and it’s never available to Apple servers or backed up to iCloud.”

Besides the fingerprint sensor, Apple’s new flagship packs a new CPU that the company says is twice as fast as the processor that powers the iPhone 5, has longer battery life and a smarter camera. It comes in three colors, while the 5C comes in five.

There is also a coprocessor chip in the 5S that senses motion and can be used for health and fitness apps.