Apple has revealed that it will ship iOS 11 on 19 September 2017, bringing with it the ability for iPhones to read NFC tags for the first time.
The capability will be available to owners of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus as well as the new iPhone 8 and 8 Plus.
Touch ID for Apple Pay transactions will continue to be supported on the new iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, the specifications show.
NFC tag writing is not, however, expected to be supported.
Next: Visit the NFCW Expo to find new suppliers and solutions
We should expect to see many novel applications. We await access to the kind of NFC implementation used by Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. Note that the BoA cardless ATM is implemented using Apple Wallet even though the BoA app does not have access to the NFC.