In-app purchases will make up majority of early Apple Pay transactions

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Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

Today marks the official roll-out of Apple’s long-awaited mobile payments service, Apple Pay. But while paying for items in-store using your iPhone is definitely an exciting prospect, Cupertino expects in-app purchases will make up the vast majority of early transactions, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“Until now, spending money on an app required a time-consuming process of creating an account and registering a credit card, but Apple Pay aims to simplify the process with the equivalent of Amazon.com Inc.’s ‘one-step checkout’ that can be verified by a fingerprint.”

The source of the information is Apple’s Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, who spoke to the newspaper.

The reason for this focus on in-app purchases is that Apple is still growing its Apple Pay network, which currently does not include some major retailers such as Walmart. At present, corporate credit cards and prepaid cards are also not accepted, nor are retailers’ proprietary credit cards — which means Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s cards are currently left out in the cold.

In addition to this, the NFC technology used by Apple Pay is only available on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which, despite being Apple’s best-selling iPhones to date, are still relatively new.

“We’re trying to do something that I think is a game changer and it requires a lot of people to play together,” Cue is quoted as saying. “There’s a lot to do here and we have a lot of work to do, but it should be huge.”

Hey, when even once-sworn emery Bill Gates thinks what you’re doing is great, you know you’re onto a winner, right?

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