Another joke by John Gruber after hinting that the iWatch was going to be revealed in September:

I’ve been working on a new joke — about NFC and a new secure enclave where you can store your credit cards, so you can pay for things at brick and mortar retail stores just by taking out your iPhone, but only if it’s one of the new iPhones — but no one seems to get my sense of humor.
Follow-up joke: It would be cool, and would make a lot of sense, if the new wearable thing had the same magic payment apparatus.

This gets me excited. Excited because I know that Apple has probably already lined up a number of retailers that will accept the new payment method from the moment the iPhone 6 and iWatch are available. 

This move is typical of Apple, design something, get the agreement of important partners and then build an ecosystem around it. A winner. 

Two years ago I discussed why Apple did not include an NFC chip in the iPhone. It seems that Apple finally believes that the technology is mature, even though I’d kill to know why only now and not back then. Maybe that is because of the ecosystem that Apple had to inevitably build around this payment system. Two years ago the retail industry was not ready for that. 

More interesting it is going to be Phil Schiller’s follow up on what he said in September 2012 (emphasis mine):

It’s not clear that NFC is the solution to any current problem. Passbook does the kinds of things customers need today.

That was two years ago. Passbook is extremely useful for tickets, loyalty cards, and boarding passes, but obviously not suited as any kind of payment. 

Is now the moment for a new payment system? I really hope so.