Apple announced its NFC-based Apple Pay payment system today that allows shoppers to go to physical retail stores and make purchases using their iPhone, rather than a physical credit card. With Apple Pay, users would just need to tap their phones to a compatible payment reader at their local market, and then the stored credit card information would be used for payments, making it fast, secure, and easy. It’s similar to how the Softcard, formerly known as ISIS payments, and Google Wallet works.
Though you can set a default credit card to always use, you can also conveniently switch between cards without even unlocking your phone. Check out how this works in our quick video below:
Essentially, with the phone locked and off, bring it close to the NFC payment reader. This will bring up options for the credit cards that are stored. All your stored credit cards will display in Passbook. Now, you can tap on which card you want to use. Next, to pay, simply put your finger on the Touch ID sensor to authenticate and bring the phone back to the NFC payment reader to tap to pay.
While this is a quick demo into Apple’s foray into NFC payments, be sure to check back with iMore where we’ll have a full detailed look at Apple Pay and how this system will work.