After the update, which is available now, owners of the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air 2, and iPad mini 3 are set to be able to pay without a card. These are the first Apple devices that come loaded with a near field communications (NFC) chip on board.
Users can place their devices within 10 inches of the contactless point-of-sale terminal, swipe a finger across the devices’ biometric touch pad (Touch ID) and the NFC chip will exchange the payment information with the terminal.
The phone creates a unique string of ID digits for each transaction, which are stored in the secure element (SE) of the devices, inaccessible to the merchant or the device user.
Before officially announcing Apple Pay, Apple formed agreements with Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, and signed up various card-issuing banks. Apple has stated that 220,000 merchants already have the NFC-enabled POS gear needed to work with Apple Pay.
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