Several reports in the last few days have suggested that Apple’s next generation iPhone, iPhone 6, will finally come with NFC technology.

Financial Times has also just confirmed that it is hearing the same thing from “people familiar with the matter.”

Financial Times claims that Apple is working with Dutch chipmaker NXP, to include its NFC chip in iPhone 6 for its new pay-by-touch mobile payment solution. NXP already supplies chips for some of Samsung’s flagship smartphones such as the Galaxy S5.

The report points out that including NFC in iPhone 6 would give a big boost to the smartphone payment market, which has failed to take off even though NFC equipped smartphones have been available since 2006. Apple already has credit card information for approximately 800 million customers thanks to iTunes and App Store, which could give it a huge advantage in the mobile payment market.

The possibility of NFC chip was first discovered in the leaked iPhone 6 schematics, which revealed that Apple may be using NXP’s PN65 chip on the iPhone 6’s logic board. Wired recently corroberated that report by claimed that NFC and mobile payments will be iPhone 6’s hallmark feature. Well known Apple blogger John Gruber also suggested that iPhone 6 could have NFC, and a new secure enclave in Apple’s A8 chip where you can store your credit cards. He also suggested that Apple’s rumored wearable device could also come with NFC.

At the beginning of the year, Wall Street Journal had also reported that Apple was building infrastructure for mobile payment service. The report claimed that Eddy Cue, Apple’s iTunes and App Store chief had met industry executives to discuss the possibility of Apple processing mobile payments for physical goods and services on its devices.

Over the past few years, there have been several rumors that claimed Apple’s iPhone will include Near Field Communications (NFC) technology. Apple has been dismissive of the technology in the past, with Schiller stating that “it’s not clear that NFC is the solution to any current problem” when the iPhone 5 was launched, and Apple got criticism for not including NFC.

But it does look like Apple is taking the plunge and including NFC technology in NFC. Some of our readers have criticized (and at times ridiculed) Apple for not including it in the iPhone, so I hope that if you were one of them then you’re glad it is finally coming in iPhone 6.