Vernz wrote:
So listen carefully there are ways around this ....
What do you think they might be? "NFC" stands for "near field communications." This technology works by transmitting & receiving very weak, very short range radio signals between compatible devices -- those that have built-in radios & antennas capable of transmitting & receiving these signals on the very specific narrow band of radio frequencies this technology uses.
So without a NFC chip in your iPhone (or Android device or Apple Watch or whatever) there is no way for it to send or receive the signals that the existing NFC devices in stores need to complete a transaction. The Bluetooth, cellular, & WiFi radios built into iPhones & such do not work on the same frequencies as NFC, & do not have the necessary sensitivity to pick up these very weak signals sent from store devices.
This is a hardware limitation, not a software one, so there is no way for Apple (or anybody else) to issue a software update to work around it. It might be possible to adapt NFC technology to use one of the radios already present in your iPhone (although as already mentioned there are significant security risks involved with that), but even if Apple did that, it still would not work unless & until the stores installed transaction devices compatible with those radios & the signals they are capable of sending & receiving.
The stores are not going to do that unless & until the security & liability issues are worked out, & they are convinced the business the devices generates will at least offset the cost of their installation & maintenance.