Apple wants to kill your wallet
Apple today announced, alongside the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch, Apple Pay, its entry to the mobile payments space. Apple Pay is Apple's take on contactless payment technology, and allows punters to digitise their Visa, MasterCard and American Express credit and debit cards and store them in Passbook on their iPhone. Users just tap their iPhone on the terminal while holding down a finger on the Touch ID scanner to make a purchase.
Apple today announced, alongside the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch, Apple Pay, its entry to the mobile payments space. Apple Pay is Apple's take on contactless payment technology, and allows punters to digitise their Visa, MasterCard and American Express credit and debit cards and store them in Passbook on their iPhone. Users just tap their iPhone on the terminal while holding down a finger on the Touch ID scanner to make a purchase.
During Apple's keynote, the company highlighted a number of security features in Apple Pay. When a credit or debit card is added to Passbook, the iPhone assigns it an encrypted Device Account Number rather than storing a user's actually card number. This means that neither a customer's card number or identity is shared with a merchant during a transition. In addition, Apple made clear that it doesn't save transaction history and that a user's payment information is only stored locally, on a dedicated chip on the iPhone.
Apps will also be able to make use of Apple Pay for one-click transactions. Shipping information will presumably be pulled from a user's Apple ID.
While Apple Pay is, for the time being, limited to the United States market, Apple have managed to garner an impressive support for the solution. American McDonalds, Subway, Nike, Disney, Walgreens, Whole Foods and Macy's outlets will all accept Apple Pay payments. Apple Pay will also be usable inside iPhone apps including Starbucks, Groupon and Target.
Brought to you by CyberShack.com.au
