This week, the onslaught of new iPhone 6 owners will be happily grabbing their new phones. As we have written in a number of recent articles, new iPhone launches provide a unique opportunity to reacquaint current users to your app and potentially gain a new crop of app users who are looking for new apps and new ways to use their phone.
And one of the most important new use cases for iPhone 6 owners is the Apple Pay system, which uses NFC technology to allow users to make secure payments. Chase is one of the first bank payment networks authorized to facilitate Apple Pay payments and they are hosting two webinars this week to walk developers through the Apple Pay process and show them how to implement the Chase SDK into their apps.
It’s a
webinar you should seriously consider participating in. The same iPhone users who have used their phone to buy a latte with the Starbucks app are going to be very comfortable using their phone to make payments at every vendor they shop with. There is a very high likelihood that Apple Pay could fundamentally change the way iOS users pay for goods and services.
So how does Apple Pay work? When a user adds a credit or debit card with Apple Pay, the actual card numbers are not stored on the device or on Apple servers. Instead, a unique device account number is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in the secure element on the iOS device. Each transaction is authorized with a one-time unique number using that device’s account number. Instead of using the security code from the back of a credit card, Apple Pay creates a dynamic security code to securely validate each transaction.
With the recent news of the credit card breaches from Target and Home Depot, iPhone users could see Apple Pay as a safer payment alternative. And if you don’t offer Apple Pay, you could be losing out on these customer’s payments.
The Chase
webinars will be held on September 16 and 18 and are free to attend. If you can’t make the webinar, Chase has created a
website with videos and other information to help developers learn more about how to leverage the Apple Pay opportunity.