NFC Times Exclusive Insight – With the addition of U.S.-based tech giant Apple on the board of the NFC Forum industry trade and standards association, the group now counts among its members all three major device or platform players rolling out NFC payments.

Apple, which became a sponsor member of the association this week, joins its two major mobile-payments competitors, Google and Samsung Electronics, along with major payments schemes Visa and MasterCard Worldwide, on the forum’s board.

Google, which is promoting host-card emulation based NFC payments, plans to launch its new Android Pay platform soon, following rollout of its relatively little-used NFC-based Google Wallet in 2011. Samsung plans to launch its NFC-based Samsung Pay wallet in September in the U.S. following a launch later this month in South Korea.

The rest of the NFC Forum’s board is made up largely of chip makers, along with device makers Sony and Nokia, which were co-founders of the forum in 2004 with NXP Semiconductors, then called Philips. The makeup of the forum board continues to have a strong slant in favor of the hardware side of the business, but with Apple it adds another member primarily concerned with the technology behind NFC payments.

In addition to Apple, Google, Samsung, NXP, Sony, Nokia, Visa and MasterCard, rounding out the board are chip makers Broadcom, STMicroelectronics, Intel and Qualcomm, along with Japan-based NEC and Dai Nippon Printing. Besides being a major smartphone maker, Samsung Electronics is also a major chip maker, including producing NFC controllers and secure elements.

There continue to be few mobile operators among forum members and none on the board. Former Softcard joint venture partners Verizon Wireless and AT&T, along with Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, are principal members, the second rung down from sponsor members.

While telcos were once seen as leading the NFC ecosystem, their influence is fading in favor of global mobile device and platform players such as Apple and Google. So the dearth of telco members of the forum is not as noticeable as before.

A seat on the board, which costs $50,000 in annual dues, entitles representatives to run for overall leadership positions of the association and gives them a leading voice on the forum’s technical committee and working groups, its compliance committee and special interest groups. It also allows them to propose initiatives to the forum.

Principal members get to appoint representatives to leadership roles on NFC Forum committees and working groups and to propose initiatives.

On the standards front, the association extends and tries to harmonize other global standards, such as the main NFC standard, ISO/IEC 18092 and the main contactless standard, ISO/IEC 14443 and also sets its own standards. The group also seeks to encourage interoperability among vendors, though doesn’t enforce interoperability through its certification program.

Apple's decision to join would give it greater influence on NFC Forum specifications, especially in its main area of interest, card emulation. The decision also acts as a sort of endorsement for the forum’s programs, since Apple has the clout and market share to ignore many of the organization’s specs. At present, Apple’s current NFC devices only support one of NFC’s three modes, card emulation, used for its Apple Pay service. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and Apple Watch don’t support tag reading and peer-to-peer modes, as the device maker has sought to optimize the NFC antenna to communicate with point-of-sale terminals.

It remains to be seen whether Apple plans to support NFC’s other two modes in future devices. It seems unlikely that Apple would submit its devices for NFC Forum certification.

Apple has appointed its director of wireless systems engineering, Syed Aon Mujtaba, to its seat on the Forum board. Mujtaba has worked for Apple since December 2008, where he leads the system engineering team for the iPhone, according to his LinkedIn profile. Previously, he held senior engineering positions at Infineon, LSI Corp., Agere Systems, and Bell Labs. Mujtaba’s profile lists “RF systems design” among his specialties.

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