Data: For a retailer, simply having an optical reader or an NFC payment terminal is not sufficient to process CurrentC or Apple Pay payments, because retailers also need interop at the data layer in order to work with any given mobile payment system. For example, at the technical layer, Apple Pay and Google Wallet could work with any retailer payment reader that uses NFC. However, not all NFC readers can process Apple Pay or Google Wallet data. In fact, retailers associated with the CurrentC standard, including some of the largest retailers in the United States, disabled the use of their NFC terminals in order to stymie NFC-based competitors.13 Similarly, for a bank to interoperate with a mobile payment platform, it needs more than technical connections to the device. To increase transaction security, Apple Pay creates one-time-use secure tokens that are transmitted to the bank instead of credit card numbers. Using these tokens ensures that if a retailer is hacked, any captured numbers are unusable for future transactions.14 However, use of these one-time tokens requires that the issuing banks be able to interpret these tokens and match them back to a specific user account.Human: One of the biggest reasons why Apple Pay and Starbucks have been successful with mobile payments has been their respective approaches to the human layer. While other mobile payment systems are fairly complicated for the end users, Apple Pay and the Starbucks app were engineered for simple set-up. For example, Apple Pay requires only that the user photograph an image of their card. Then, to use Apple Pay, the user simply holds the device near an NFC terminal and activates the biometric fingerprint reader for verification. By contrast, as Figure 4.4 shows, setting up CurrentC requires multiple steps including entering a passcode, checking account data, and other identifying information.Institutional: Many mobile payment systems operate over the existing institutional credit card network that comprises the global payment processing system. This system has already established the norms and rules that help ensure that retailers and banks are fairly compensated. One aspect of this system is the fee that retailers must pay to the credit card companies to cover the cost of the complex institutional network. These so-called “swipe fees” average up to about 2 per Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2016 103 Chapter 4 Figure 4.3: Apple patent diagram showing various components of Apple Pay system Source: NFC World, http://www.nfcworld.com/2014/01/16/327536/apple-patent-combines-nfc-bluetooth-wifi-mobile-payments/