It’s been a while since Apple Pay made an appearance. I’ve used it a handful of times. Maybe unnecessary so in some cases.
As of April 2016, what does Apple Pay look like and how can people use it?
Device Support
Apple Pay is supported on iPhoneSE, iPhone6/s and iPhone6/s Plus running 8.1 and above. Also supported for Apple Pay within apps are iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 3 and iPad Pro.
And Apple Watch. This also means that you can use Apple Pay on an iPhone 5, if paired with an Apple Watch.
Apple Guide to setting up Apple Pay
Card Support
Apple Pay is supported by 28 card issuers. Update: Barclays added support in April 2016.
Apple Pay is supposed in 5 countries, USA, UK, Canada, Australia and China.
Locations
Apple Pay can be used in over 2 millions locations.
Apple Pay in Apps
Note: Apple Pay is for physical goods and services, In-App Purchases are for virtual goods and subscriptions.
Apple Pay can be integrated into apps. This is made simple with integrations by third party providers including Stripe and Braintree. There is also a hosted implementation if you are a Shopify seller. You can use Apple Pay in Airbnb, Fancy, HotelTonight, OpenTable, StubHub and Uber.
Loyalty Cards
Loyalty cards can be included and presented for payment. Walgreens was one of the first to introduce this option. Depending upon the retailer you either present your phone once for both payment and loyalty transactions, or present the phone twice; once per transaction.
This seems to be suffering from slow adoption in the UK.
Apple Pay on websites
Apple Pay can be used to pay on websites. But not yet. It’s likely to be a WWDC announcement with availability by the end of 2016.
Why should you consider including Apple Pay in your app?
The following quotes are taken from the WWDC 2015 talk Apple Pay Within Apps video:
StubHubhave a great iPhone app.You can buy event tickets directly on the phone.They integrated with Apple Pay and they found that Apple Pay users transact 20% more frequently than regular customers.
Another app that’s seen really great things from Apple Pay is OpenTable.You cannot only book a reservation but you can go into a restaurant and pay for your meal directly on your phone at the table.And when they integrated that product with Apple Pay, they saw transaction growth of 50%.
Staples have a really nice app you can buy all of your office supplies directly from your phone and they saw an increase in overall conversion, that’s the percentage of users who became paying customers of 109% with Apple Pay!
Joe Einhorn, the CEO of Fancysaid Apple Pay is not only driving more purchases but activating our biggest spenders.I can also tell you that iOS users of Fancy out spend all over mobile platforms combined by a factor of two to one.These are customers would really like using Apple Pay to buy things and they want to buy lots of things.So it’s great for your apps.
Developing Apple Pay Apps
The Apple Pay Developer site has all the resources needed to get started on app integration.
Using a third party implementation by Stripe or Braintree (a PayPal company) will speed up the process significantly.
Apple Pay is supported within the iOS simulator with available testing cards for each provider you choose to support.
For additional updates on Apple Pay.