APPLE AIMS TO kickstart the mobile payment industry with its own service called Apple Pay.
The service is available to anyone who has an iTunes account and uses NFC (Near Field Communication) and Touch ID to authenticate payments. The service is built into the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch and will allow users to pay for goods with one tap.
Apple was keen to highlight how the service uses privacy and security, mentioning that no details about the transaction is tracked by Apple or the cashier. Merchants will get a one-time number used for that specific payment instead of the card details.
It also uses a feature called Secure Element, which is a dedicated chip that stores encrypted payment information.
If your phone is lost or stolen, you can cancel payments through Find my Phone, ensuring that your iPhone (or Apple Watch) isn’t used without your permission.
Additional cards can be added to Pay by taking a photo of it with your iPhone and adding it to the list, and is working with American Express, Mastercard and Visa for payments.
For online payments, the service uses one-touch checkout, ensuring that you don’t need to enter in payment details to buy apps or services.
For now, the service will only be made available to users in the US come October, but the plan is to expand the service to other countries as it gains a foothold.
In a statement, the Chief Digital Officer at Visa Europe, Steve Perry, said that it was “working closely with Apple and with our member banks to bring this new service to market in Europe.”
Currently there are more than 500 million people with iTunes accounts, and the company has over 800 million credit cards on file.
However, it faces a major problem with the issues surrounding iCloud and celebrity photos being stolen from it, and it will have to address such concerns if it wants users to use Apple Pay.
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