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Comment by maaarghk | Hacker News Reader

"Host card emulation" -- Does this mean I can "upload" my NFC bank cards and transport card and have my phone emulate them? If so that is -freaking awesome-.

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Not quite, but everyone and his brother will be able to start issuing NFC 'cards' that work with existing contactless terminals. Think PayPal, Square, your favourite loyalty programmes etc etc.

And there's no need to negotiate/buy access to secure elements, or get involved with TSMs etc -- as long as the issuer looks after its own security.

This is going to blow NFC wide open :)

Hey does this mean that if a Bitcoin exchange gets a hold of an AID then they could write an app that would let me use my phone to pay with bitcoin at an existing contactless terminal? Like, apps can emulate contactless cards, but you can't necessarily upload existing cards you mean? Sorry, I just don't quite "get" it yet I think :P

BitPlastic[1] is a about as close as you can get right now. I have been working for the past year on a prototype Bitcoin smart-card compatible with existing contact less terminals, I've gone this route because I am not particularly comfortable with storing my private key on my phone.

Prototype works, but lets just say it needs a lot more work. Not sure whether to continue with, for anything like this to have any adoption by retailers the entire Bitcoin community needs to get behind one standard. That is the Bitcoin Payment Protocol[2] which is incompatible with my approach. The Bitcoin Payment Protocol will with the new Android 4.4 changes.

1. https://bitplastic.com/ 2. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0070

No, your cards contain special chips which you can't replicate (otherwise anyone could clone your card on touch). This post refers to the NFC hardware not needing a secure chip, to get around hardware and software limitations.

That would be cool as crap. And quickly the subject of all sorts of hell across the board.

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