The folks from Cupertino, California are billing Apple Pay as a revolutionary way to use your smartphone as your digital wallet. Apple Pay uses the NFC chip built within the iPhone 6/iPhone 6 Plus in addition to a “secure enclave” and your fingerprint to authenticate transactions wirelessly at retail locations.
Apple has partnered with American Express, Visa, and MasterCard along with participating banks Wells Fargo, Bank of America, CapitalOne, Citi, and Chase for the initial rollout of Apple Pay. In addition, Apple Pay will work at over 220,000 retail locations including restaurants like McDonalds and Subway, and stores like Macy’s and Toys R Us.
Thanks to some inside information gathered by 9to5 Mac, we’re now being let in on how the setup process for Apple Pay works and how users will manage their credit cards on-device.
Users will be able to add their credit or debit cards to their device directly through the Settings app or via Passbook. Simply snapping a photo of the front of the card enters the credit card information; all of your pertinent account information is then transferred to your smartphone.
Thanks to the aforementioned direct partnerships with both the credit card companies and the banks, users will be able to access recent transactions from each stored card, directly contact their bank, and have the option to download their respective bank’s app for further control of your credit card account.
Those above features seem pretty straightforward, but Apple is taking things a step further with added functionality that will automatically update your credit card’s expiration date when your current card expires. No action is needed on the part of the user when this takes place, and a push notification will alert you to the change.
Employees at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino have already begun using Apple Pay at the on-campus Caffe’ Macs restaurant. And if leaked documents from Walgreens are to be believed, Apple Pay will launch for U.S. customers on October 18.