In the past few weeks, Apple Pay has been making the news as the new way to easily implement mobile payments with the iPhone 6 and the upcoming Apple Watch.

What Apple did -- apparently with a lot of help from NXP -- is bring the best of both worlds together: a mobile device with a hardware secure element (not the SIM card) that can be easily provisioned over the air by the issuing bank or credit-card company.

Users only need to snap a picture of any payment card supported by Apple Pay and, after a security check, the SE is provisioned over the internet with the right credentials. Apple used the NXP 65V10 NFC module, which probably contains the PN548 Secure Element. The solution has been jointly developed by NXP and Apple.

Now NXP is launching the PN66T, a single solution to implement the same functionality of Apple Pay but for Android devices. While NXP claims that the module is OS independent, the features clearly indicate that Android devices are the likely recipients of the SoC.

The company says the module combines a highly secure Smart MX2 element (P61), near field communications (NFC) radio, operating system and trust provisioning. It has been designed to solve most of the problems and compatibility issues when emulating different NFC solutions, and to help OEMs, MNOs and other players to develop secure NFC solutions. It also offers complementary support for Host Card Emulation (HCE) to help port existing applications to new devices.

The module also helps reduce the BoM for new devices as it integrates the NFC controller and secure element in one chip. NXP says the module also improves the NFC range and allows reduction of antenna size by 25 percent.

The advantage for smartphone OEMs is the easy implementation of payment solutions today, as the PN66T is certified to Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMVCo), and also supports American Express ExpressPay, thus fully covering the three big credit card companies, ensuring the compatibility and interoperability with existing and future payment solutions.

Editor’s note: While Apple Pay has driven headlines and may be a key driver for sales of the Apple Watch and perhaps the iPhone line, the developments above may ease the way for Android and Android Wear devices to have similar capabilities.