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I have been using my android phone's NFC to refill by public transportation card in Turkey. When I switched to iPhone all the apps and apps providers are telling that there is no NFC support for such action on iOS devices.

But I know some apps are capable of reading our electronic, credit card like citizenship cards using NFC. Also some apps on the store claims that they can write to NFC cards.

Do Apple devices chipsets and OS supports NFC writing or only reading ?

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  • iPhones definitely support Apple Pay & paying for public transport systems via NFC. I'm not sure a pre-paid top-up system is the same, though. The London transport structure is 'pay as you go' with maximum charges tallied at the end of each day.
    – Tetsujin
    Sep 6, 2021 at 8:34
  • thanks, The thing is if apple pay works like; read target payment device info and use it via network through apple pay system (where they charge an amount and make money:), something like swift money transfer ). in this case there is no need for writing back to NFC device. IT's also possible and requires less effort to collect payment through the iOS device itself :D Still soo confused of the case.
    – Olgun Kaya
    Sep 6, 2021 at 9:05

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Apple's Core NFC is able to write to NFC tags, they even have a sample project with explanations. But as far as I know, NFC support is limited and it looks like payment apps are not allowed to use it:

Core NFC doesn't support payment-related Application IDs.

I didn't spot any obvious reason in the App Store guidelines that would prohibit a public transport app provider from adding NFC support.

  • It's possible the provider's information is outdated (back from when Core NFC was not available).
  • Maybe the specific NFC type is not supported by Apple.
  • The provider may not want to give the usual 30% share to Apple (and thus states "Apple does not support it").
  • Maybe Apple does indeed reject "pay in app, transfer to NFC" use. That seems unlikely to me, though.
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  • I am choosing this one as the correct answer. I tried some apps from the store and it's able to read the NFC tag in my transportation card. I am highly suspecting that the teams in such venders are not ready to implement it. One of them is a bank belonging to BBVA group which make me doubt about my last sentence, I will stick to it. Blame developer not Apple :P
    – Olgun Kaya
    Sep 6, 2021 at 11:56

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