Apple Pay and NFC will revolutionize ticketing

Apple’s new payment system is poised to transform the way thousands of customers transact purchases in their favorite stores and restaurants, but its influence extends beyond retail. Combined with existing innovations in iOS’s Passbook system, Apple Pay could replace tickets to public transportation, movie theaters, events, and attractions. While wearables like Apple Watch are equally likely to reshape the large event experience, the process of purchasing and accessing mobile tickets will never be the same. Apple wants the iPhone to replace paper tickets, full stop.

Millions of people get to work and school every day on major cities’ public transportation systems, most of which issue individual plastic fare cards for each rider—or paper passes for each ride. These tickets and passes use basic radio-frequency technologies similar to near-field communication, and are frequently used once and discarded. With Apple Pay, the same existing infrastructure in hundreds of stations like those in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco can be repurposed to accommodate the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch NFC chips. These passes and fare cards would live in Apple’s longstanding ticket and membership card handler, iOS Passbook, which this week saw its biggest upgrades since its introduction in iOS 6.

Passbook consolidates various gift cards, membership cards, and one-time tickets into a contextually aware, centrally located hub on iPhone home screens. The system has long handled scannable cards for Starbucks, tickets for major airlines, and passes at participating movie theaters. With Passbook, developers and event venues can issue digital passes through their mobile apps, the web, or even via email—a straightforward “Add to Passbook” button automatically downloads the digital pass and stores it in users’ Passbook app. From there, the pass can alert users at just the right time or just the right location using geofence threshold notifications—say, the second they reach the airport or just as their concert is about to begin.

For large event venues and amusement parks, the combination of Apple Watch and an Apple Pay–strengthened Passbook offer new utility for attendees. Just as many parks and music festivals are beginning to issue simple RFID bands to ticket holders, the inevitable popularity of Apple Watch and similar wearable devices could reduce overhead and prevent the need to manufacture such technologically complex tickets. In fact, combinations like Apple Watch and Passbook or Android Wear and Google Wallet passes could replace the need for these tickets altogether, allowing venues and event managers to simply issue a digital pass that lives in attendees’ newfangled digital wallets.

Emergent technologies are entering the public consciousness as major companies like Apple begin integrating them into promising product families, and NFC ticketing is one of the first examples of these additions’ real-world impact. As smartphones and connected devices become increasingly capable and aware of their surroundings, manufacturers are finding new ways for them to interact with existing processes and infrastructures. Soon, the sight of shoppers waving their smartphones at the register will become as commonplace as swiping their credit card, and entering a major theme park with a scan of their Apple Watch will feel as natural as tearing a ticket stub. Last century’s physical tools, like paper tickets and credit cards, will seem as foreign to future generations as typewriters do today—and that time is fast approaching.