New Details Emerge On Apple’s Mobile Payments Play

The world is eagerly anticipating Apple’s mysterious event kicking off at 10 a.m. PDT, with expectations of a new iPhone and the much-rumored “iWatch” wearable.

The payments world is abuzz at the prospect of Apple’s mysterious mobile payment system.

Bank Innovation has dug up confirmations from sources in the know that Apple’s mobile payments play exists, and interestingly enough, is built on Near Field Communication tech for tap-to-pay checkouts, technology which Apple has notoriously spurned up to now.

Both the new iPhone and the iWatch (it likely won’t be called the iWatch), will feature NFC.

To ease consumer fears regarding mobile payments security, Apple will also incorporate tokenization, a method of obscuring payment details with a representative value that gets transferred between devices. These tokens are one-time-use and are essentially useless to a hacker.

Re/code also reports that Apple is in talks with nationwide pharmacies, Walgreens and CVS Health, to partner on launch, while other outlets claim high-end retailer Nordstrom is also on the list.

However, time and time again, startups and even established players’ mobile payment offerings have proven that enabling payments is not enough.

Retailers need to be incentivized to use these new forms of payment, and part of the solution is loyalty and rewards enablement to drive consumer engagement.

One solution is Apple’s iBeacon, a Bluetooth low energy device that can enable rewards and offers based on hyper-accurate location tracking., which is currently enabled in select Apple retail stores.

Apple was the first company to make the smartphone mainstream around the world with the introduction of the first iPhone. Their sixth could evolve the way the world shops and transacts.

Lucky for us, we’ll only have to wait a few hours to find out.