PayPal Already Working To Integrate Apple's Touch ID Into Its Mobile Payment Apps
June 6, 2014
PayPal is already hard at work in integrating Apple's Touch ID fingerprint-scanning technology into its mobile payment apps.
According to Business Insider, a team of Paypal developers attended a WWDC session yesterday to learn more about the Touch ID API, which was recently opened to third-party use. This was confirmed by Anuj Nayar, PayPal's senior director of global initiatives.
"It seems to be a fairly easy API to use, but we're still kicking the tires," a source from PayPal said in a statement to the site.
Since its introduction with the iPhone 5s last year, Touch ID has been available to use when making purchases in the App Store and the iTunes Store only. But with the official release of iOS 8 this fall, PayPal, among other apps, will enable users to authorize e-commerce transactions with a fingerprint scan instead of a typed password.
Apple introduced the Touch ID API for developers earlier this week at its WWDC keynote.
Apple has also been rumored to be developing its own mobile payment service that integrates with Touch ID. Back in January, Apple CEO Tim Cook said during a financial results conference call that mobile payment was a factor behind the introduction of the fingerprint-scanning security feature.
Also in that month, PayPal itself expressed its willingness to partner with Apple on the latter's mobile payment system. Small wonder, then, that it's keen on integrating Apple's Touch ID into its already widely used mobile payment service.
