From Windows Phone to iOS — we’ve come full circle in the history of mobile payments

Sometimes technology comes full circle. And sometimes it takes more than a decade to bring a story full circle—one that began back when solutions we now take for granted were still in their infancy. Today, we can say: we’ve come full circle.

The Beginning: Windows Phone and a Vision for the Future

Between 2011 and 2013, we were one of the first teams to develop a working contactless payment solution using NFC technology on Windows Phone. At the time, this technology was ahead of its time—for many, the idea of using a phone as a payment instrument was more of a vision than a real product.

Creating such a solution required not only technical expertise but also overcoming platform limitations, addressing security concerns, and meeting the strict requirements of the financial sector. At the same time, we applied our experience to Android, where card emulation (HCE)-based payments were beginning to gain real traction. We were active in two different mobile ecosystems and consistently built out the “phone-as-wallet” technology.

What about iOS? A world locked tight.

Here, the story became much more complicated. While Android allowed for the development of independent NFC solutions, Apple’s ecosystem remained hermetically sealed for years. In Poland, the situation was further complicated by the lack of Apple Pay availability. For many years, iPhone users did not have access to contactless payments comparable to those on other platforms.

The situation began to change only when Apple opened up certain possibilities, though it continued to tightly control access to NFC technology, favoring its own solution—Apple Wallet. For independent technology providers, this effectively meant a closed door. The journey from Windows Phone and Android to iOS took so long not because we lacked the technology, but because the platform wouldn’t let us use it.

More than a decade later—the circle is complete

Today, we can finally say: we’ve done it. Thanks to regulatory changes in the EU and our collaboration with PKO Bank Polski and the Polish Payment Standard (PSP), we’ve managed to bring this story to a close. For the first time in Poland, we have a solution based on our technology that also works on iOS.

This means that the initiative, whose roots go back to our work on NFC for Windows Phone over a decade ago, is now present in all key ecosystems: Windows Phone → Android → iOS. The circle is now complete.

Technology changes faster than the possibilities for its use

This story teaches an important lesson. In the IT world, we often think that technology itself is the limitation—we need to come up with an idea, write the code, and implement it. In the case of mobile payments, the problem looked different for years. The technology was ready earlier. The ideas, solutions, and teams were ready. What was missing, however, was access to the appropriate platform mechanisms.

So we view today’s success not merely as the completion of another project, but as the closing of a certain technological era. There is something symbolic about the fact that it was in Poland that we were able to bring this story to a close. One idea. Various platforms. Over a decade of evolution.

These are the moments in technology development that bring the most joy—when a solution that was once an experiment and a vision of the future becomes part of everyday reality years later.