Apple Pay is Apple's new mobile payments service, which it first debuted in September alongside the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6 Plus, and the Apple Watch. Apple Pay is expected to become widely available to consumers beginning in October, and ahead of its official release, we've gathered everything that's currently known about the service into a roundup so users can get an idea of what to expect.
With Apple Pay, iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners will be able to make payments for goods and services with their iPhones, both in stores and within participating apps, using the NFC chip built into the devices. While Apple Pay will initially be restricted to iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners, iPhone 5, 5c, and 5s users will also be able to take advantage of the service if they purchase an Apple Watch after it is released.
Apple has described Apple Pay as the most secure payment solution available, as it uses Device Account Numbers rather than storing credit card numbers and keeps all payment information in a dedicated chip on the iPhone, called the Secure Element.
All payments are verified using Touch ID, which prevents someone who has stolen a device to make unauthorized purchases. Furthermore, if an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus is stolen, its ability to make payments can be disabled through Find My iPhone.
Apple has said that Apple Pay will be available beginning in October, enabled through an upcoming update to iOS 8.
The Apple Pay roundup, like all of our other roundups is accessible through a dedicated index page that shows a full list of all available roundups ordered by most recent update. The roundup is also accessible directly through the "Roundups" tab in the top navigation bar on all MacRumors pages.
Top Rated Comments
keep telling yourself that.
LOL! It would probably be more cost-effective to upgrade to an iPhone 6 instead. Why spend money on an accessory to help you spend money?
Normally, the terminal identifies your debit card or credit card.
With Apple Pay, your iPhone creates a virtual credit card. The NFC terminal doesn't realise it's not a real card. It send the data about the credit card for example to Visa, Visa has worked with Apple and figures out that this is an Apple Pay virtual credit card and accepts it, so the NFC terminal accepts your card.
The NFC terminal has no idea what was going on. It only knows that it was given details of a card (it doesn't know it was a virtual card) and that Visa accepted the card.
The nice thing is that this virtual credit card will be used only _once_ for that one payment. So if you have a company losing 56 million credit card numbers to hackers, the hackers don't have your card number. They have a virtual card number that was accepted for that one payment, and won't be accepted for any other payment ever again.
With Apple Pay, _nobody_ will ever see your credit card number. That includes Apple. Your credit card number cannot be stolen because nobody ever has it. That's different with Google Wallet. And Apple Pay requires a secure chip in the iPhone that does all the work, and that chip is not hackable.