We are developing UTipping, a digital tipping application, and are seeking technical guidance before implementation.
Our intended experience is:
The recipient opens the app and activates “Receive Tip”. The sender selects a tip amount and “Send Tip”. Both authenticated apps are unlocked, online, and in the foreground. The two iPhones are brought into very close physical proximity. The proximity interaction exchanges or resolves only a short-lived, opaque session identifier. No funds, card credentials, cryptograms, or payment-authorization data are exchanged through NFC. The sender confirms the resolved recipient and amount. Payment is processed separately through the backend and licensed payment infrastructure.
Standard Core NFC appears to provide reader functionality for supported tags/protocols, but not a general application-controlled iPhone-to-iPhone peer/tag-emulation channel.
We would appreciate guidance on:
whether this interaction can be implemented using Core NFC; whether NFC & SE Platform or HCE / CardSession could provide the presenter role; whether one third-party iPhone can present a temporary application-controlled identifier to another third-party iPhone; whether both apps must remain foreground; and whether Nearby Interaction with BLE / Multipeer Connectivity is the recommended alternative for very-close-proximity recipient identification.
The NFC/proximity interaction would only identify the intended recipient. The financial transaction is completely separate.
Apple Developer Support previously referred us to engineering under case 102948761329.
We have also submitted the detailed technical architecture through Feedback Assistant:
FB24517831
Any guidance from Apple framework engineers regarding the supported architecture and entitlement path would be greatly appreciated.