You’ve probably heard of Apple Pay. It’s been available in the US since late last year and its Apple’s big stab at mobile payments. Better yet it’s finally landed in the UK, so it’s now a lot more relevant.
With that in mind we’ve created this guide for everything you need to know, from how it works to and where you’ll be able to use it.
Apply Pay is a digital wallet and contactless payment system. It’s slick, simple and fast, using NFC to communicate with compatible payment terminals and the Touch ID fingerprint scanner to authorise the payment.
To use Apple Pay you first need to set it up, but that’s simple to do. Apple Pay can be found in Passbook once your device is on iOS 8.3 or higher and to make payments with it you’ll need to add one or more cards. This can be done either by tapping out the details or using the camera to snap a photo of them.
Then when you’re ready to make a payment you just wave your device over an NFC reader and it should automatically put the payment through on your primary card, with just a tap of the Touch ID fingerprint scanner required to complete the purchase.
Currently you can use Apple Pay with Visa, MasterCard or American Express credit and debit cards issued by First Direct, NatWest, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander and Ulster Bank.
HSBC was supposed to be offering it at launch but is now claiming it will support Apple Pay by the end of July instead.
This should be followed by support from Bank of Scotland, Coutts, Halifax, Lloyds Bank, MBNA, M&S Bank and TSB Bank later in 2015.
If you have a football, charity or travel branded MBNA card then that should work with Apple Pay too once the bank starts supporting it.
Barclay’s, which was previously unaccounted for, has also confirmed that it will be supporting Apple Pay in the future, but has not yet given a timeframe.
Retailers don’t have to have opted in to Apple Pay for it to work in their stores, in fact it should work anywhere which has a contactless terminal at checkout. This has caused some confusion though as some retailers seemingly aren’t aware of this or haven’t trained for it.
In all, Apple Pay is supported in over 250,000 shops, including Lidl, M&S, Post Office, Liberty, McDonalds, Boots, Costa, Waitrose, M&S Simply Food, Pret, BP, Subway, Wagamama, Spar, KFC, Nando's, New Look, Starbucks, Dune and JD Sports. The ones in that list have specifically opted in, so hopefully they should be expecting Apple Pay payments, but again, anywhere that supports contactless payments should support Apple Pay.
If you’re in London you’re in luck, as you’ll also be able to use Apple Pay on all TfL services. So you can use your phone to pay for both above ground and underground trains as well as buses. You’ll also be able to use it with Addison Lee minicabs.
You can expect more places to start offering support over time, especially if Apple Pay takes off. In fact EAT, Costcutter, Dune, Five Guys, JD Sports, New Look, Screwfix, Wilko and others will be adding support later this year.
As well as physical locations Apple Pay also works with apps, allowing you to make in-app purchases with the press of a button.
Initially this will be available with Addison Lee, Airbnb, Argos, Booking.com, British Airways, Domino’s, easyJet, Hailo, HotelTonight, hungryhouse, JD Sports, Just Eat, lastminute.com, Miss Selfridge, Ocado, Stubhub, thetrainline.com, Top10, Topshop, Uncover, Vueling, YPlan, Zalando and Zara.
To use Apple Pay you’ll need an Apple device with NFC. Right now that means the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3 or Apple Watch (paired with an iPhone 5/5c or above). However the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 don’t use it for contactless payments, they simply use it as a payment option in apps.
Future Apple devices will presumably also support it, but it’s never likely to work for contactless payments with older handsets or tablets as they lack the required hardware. It’s also very unlikely to ever work with non-Apple devices.
Yes. Apple Pay requires you to authorise payments with Touch ID, so if anyone other than you tries to use your account the payment will fail as their fingerprint won’t match.
The exception to this is when making payments using the Apple Watch, as this has no fingerprint scanner, but it must be unlocked to work, which it won’t be if it’s been lost or stolen as it locks once it loses contact with your wrist and then a passcode must be entered to unlock it.
Payment information is also encrypted, with actual card numbers stored on neither your device nor the servers. Instead a unique encrypted number is assigned to each card and each transaction uses a one-time unique security code.
On top of that payments will usually be capped at £20, though stores can choose to raise that limit. This means you won’t be able to make any big purchases with it, but it also means no-one else will.
Well, obviously you can only use it if you’ve got an Apple device. There’s also the question of how heavily supported it will be, especially as other contactless payment options have so far been a fairly niche thing.
But the more big name companies which offer contactless solutions the more popular they’re likely to become and it doesn’t get much bigger than Apple, so hopefully this launch could push it into the mainstream, which will benefit not just Apple customers but anyone else with a contactless payment capable device.
