drewguy

Or switch AirDrop to contacts only.

drewguy

Would be a good way to pay a bar tab - tap your phone anywhere on a counter to pay for your premium wine and beer!

1KChinito

All you have to do is place a piece of aluminum foil inside of of your non RFID blocking wallet on each side. It is much cheaper and does the job.

Collierkr

perhaps true but a pain. I didn't pay much for my wallet and I don't have to fumble with foil.

tmiw

While I have seen NFC readers embedded into countertops before (The Melt's location in La Jolla, CA near UCSD, for example), they would likely need to be combined with a preexisting tablet/POS type setup (like what EWR and IAH have)--and they'd definitely not be writable by random devices. More likely is that any NFC reader for payment will be built into some sort of handheld device carried by bartenders, or possibly an area with a standard terminal where you'd go to for payment.

Speaking of handheld devices, I have seen FAs carry around devices that look like they have the right hardware for it. I have no idea if it's enabled yet, though.

RFID blocking wallets are a waste of money for most Americans considering that such cards are extremely uncommon here. Only a few are issued like that by default, with a few more on an opt-in basis.

(Even if such cards were common in the US I'd still say that the chances of getting skimmed that way are very remote. That's a discussion better suited for another thread, though.)

RandomNobody

NFC in tabletops is growing in the food service industry, at least in the "Fast Casual" type places that I've seen.

You order at a counter, the cashier gives you an electronic coaster. The coaster looks like those pager buzzers, but instead, you put them on the table, the coaster reads the NFC ID of the table and broadcasts "I'm coaster #X and I'm at table #Y ". Server then knows what table to go to to deliver your food.

Around me, Stonefire Grill was the first place I noticed them. Though I see them more at "upscale" strip malls that share a common patio amongst several restaurants.

Ah, found it. This is the brand of Table Tracker I most commonly see:

https://www.lrsus.com/table-tracker/

Xyzzy

I thought UA was using that sort f set up with the in-club pizzas that they were selling a while back (I have no idea whether they are still selling them). IIRC the B18 club in ORD was one of the ones selling pizzas...

mvitale

OT, but...I haven't seen any pizza sales in the ORD clubs in many months. I am pretty sure they've discontinued that...

-mvitale

BullishGS

IMO if the the intentions of this is to tell you a la carte food and have it delivered to your seat, I feel that it downgrades the experience of the UC system. Having paid food just feels like they are trying to nickel and dime, almost like what they do over at AA. Now if they offered a la carte options at no charge , then that'll be a perfect implementation.

wavid

The FA handheld readers definitely worked with Apple Pay last spring. Don't know if it was officially condoned/it's always possible they disabled it (like CVS/Rite Aid did), but the capability is there.

tmiw

I don't remember seeing the lights above the reader turn on the last time I bought something on board, but this was back in March. Not sure why they disabled it (or maybe they need to push something on their end to enable it?)

alangore

This has nothing to do with Bluetooth, and you can't shut it off. NFC (Near Field Communications) chips are used to automatically trigger given applications in an NFC-enabled smartphone held against it. The most familiar application for NFC is Apple Pay, in which the triggered application is Apple's payment 'wallet' that you have pre-loaded with credit and debit cards. To make a transaction, you just rest the top edge of your phone against a designated place on the point-of-sale terminal and the Apple Wallet app automatically comes up, without having to be logged in to your phone.

What he's talking about here is that he rests his phone on a certain place on the counter, and Apple Pay pops up because it senses an NFC chip there. The payments chip is actually only the first of many different kinds of NFC chips which can be set up to trigger different actions, such as unlocking a private door.

tmiw

Some Android phones actually do let you shut off NFC. It doesn't use much if any battery when not used, though, so I usually keep mine on.

AeRoSpaceman

I think the user meant that you can't shut off the NFC Tag not the service on the device.

tmiw

The tag itself is powered by the phone, though, so it won't actually send anything unless the NFC service on the phone is on. (Though POS devices are usually actively powered as well so that contactless credit/debit cards can work.)