Apple Partners With Visa, MasterCard, AmEx for iPhone 6 Payments: Reports

According to new reports from Bloomberg and other outlets, Apple has partnered with Visa, MasterCard and American Express to create a mobile payment platform, allowing users to pay with their iPhones in brick and mortar stores.

Last week Wired reported that the next iPhone will likely include a near field communication chip (NFC), which would make these types of mobile payments possible.

With an NFC chip, a small amount of data can be transferred between devices held near each other. Google Wallet is an NFC-enabled mobile payment platform that has been around for a while now but just hasn't quite caught on. Retailers could be partly to blame as some have been slow to adopt the new technology.


However, Visa and MasterCard have set an October 2015 deadline for U.S. retailers to make the switch from reading cards via magnetic strips to using newer embedded chips.

So it seems like the timing is perfect for Apple to start implementing a mobile payment feature.

And despite Google getting lackluster results with its efforts, a market analyst told Bloomberg things look better for Apple. "Love it or hate it, Apple drives a lot of standards in the industry. They are the mover in these markets. When they do something, the industry seems to follow."

If the reports are true, Apple is likely to announce the feature at its product event Sept. 9, when the iPhone 6 is expected to be unveiled.

Original article can be found here.