iPhone 5 to have NFC
The rumor that iPhone 5 will support a Near Field Communication chip inside, has been persistent ever since this field started getting some traction last year, with the US carriers announcing the ISIS mobile payment platform development, and Google starting city trials with the Nexus S and its embedded NFC chip. These chips are used for contactless payments, remote login and access-granting, as well as tag-reading.
On a unrelated rumor, a contactless chip for payments, access and login is indeed being tested in several iPhone prototypes. The idea is that when you are near any Mac that supports this capability, your iPhone connects securely with the NFC chip to it, and the icons of the apps you’ve purchased from the Mac App Store, appear on the desktop, ready to be downloaded on first use.