Is it necessary to be partner with banks to write an NFC payment app?

Question

Is it possible to implement NFC payment client without being partner with banks, if I don't generate virtual card numbers like Google Wallet?

Update : I'm asking about the underlying technology of writing an NFC payment app -- if necessary hardware and programming techniques are supplied, does one need to specifically contact each bank to write such an app (eg provide encryption key and such)?

Answer 1

Your question has a lot of assumptions on it. You want a payment client, but what do you want to use for payments? We could be talking about digital wallets, bank accounts or things like bitcoins.

NFC Protocols

First, you must understand that NFC allows several protocols that you can use, and they are all listed on the documentation

Visa / Mastercard integration

You can integrate with Mastercard and Visa Token Service .

Prepaid Cards / Smart Cards

There are several companies with pre-paid cards around the world. Maybe you can integrate with some of them. Not debit cards, but the ones some transport agencies use . Although reproducing/emulating them without proper permissions might be illegal.

Or just make you own money

Yeah, why not. Imagine an arcade machines shop, where users can activate them by a prepaid system using the same protocols everyone else use. Since a lot of retro arcades nowdays are being build with things like raspberry pi which can easily have an NFC module too.

Of course, it would be a single purpose payment system... but fun to implement.