Apple Pay coming to mobile websites before year's end
Since its launch in October 2014, Apple Pay has been offering quick and easy payments in partner stores and compatible apps. But Apple’s mobile payment service may soon be coming to a new turf: the complex of mobile websites.
Citing “multiple sources,” Re/code reports that Apple Pay’s expansion to mobile websites will be available in Safari on iPhones and iPads that feature Apple’s Touch ID technology.
Touch ID is used to authenticate payments made through Apple Pay with just the user’s fingerprint. It effectively bypasses the need to enter payment and shipping information, seeing as this has been previously entered for accounts linked with the user’s digital wallet.
And with Apple Pay’s expansion to mobile websites, the need to download the corresponding iOS apps to pay for products and services using Apple Pay will be done away with as well.
The move, though, would further put Apple Pay in stiff competition with PayPal, whose One Touch online checkout service is used by more than half of the top 500 retailers on the Web.
Apple is said to be planning to launch Apple Pay’s expansion to mobile website in time for this year’s holiday shopping season, with an announcement thereof expected to be made by the company at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
Apple has previously been rumored to be expanding Apple Pay to support person-to-person payments and card-less ATM withdrawals, and to be available in more countries.
Read more about the prospects of person-to-person payments and card-less withdrawals with Apple Pay
Learn more about Apple Pay’s initial and international launches