Apple Pay’s First Impressions

The Seven Need-to-Knows About Apple’s New iPhones and Mobile Payments

1. Apple will introduce NFC-enabled iPhones–the 6 and 6 Plus of sizes 4.7” and 5.5” respectively.

2. Apple Pay is the mobile payments capability. It will tokenize cardholder payment information on a secure element chip, which should eliminate the risk associated with having cardholder data stored on the phone. Apple will also use network standard tokenization to encrypt transaction data.

3. Starting in October, Apple Pay can be used at more than 220,000 merchant locations across the U.S. accepting American Express, Master Card and Visa. Those merchant locations include Macys, Bloomingdales, Whole Foods, McDonalds, Subways, Staples, Nike, Petco, Toys R Us, Babies R Us, Disney and Walgreens.

4. Using iOS8, iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users can electronically store their credit and debit cards on their iPhone passbook.

5. Apple will not collect any transaction data (how much consumers spent, what they bought, etc.)

6. The Apple Watch, which should be released in early 2015, would allow users to download applications including Apple Pay and access them using a digital crown.

7. Like the iPhone, the watch would include various service such as messaging, Siri and an Apple health app (including heart rate monitor).

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