Major Apple Wallet Updates Unveiled

Hey Payments Fanatic!

Apple’s annual WWDC event was nothing short of extraordinary, showcasing their commitment to “thinking different.” Among the standout announcements, for the payments industry, were three major updates to Apple Wallet that promise to enhance user convenience and functionality.

1. Tap to Cash

One of the most exciting new features is "Tap to Cash."

This innovative tool allows users to transfer money to another Apple Pay user nearby without exchanging personal details. Using iOS 18, you simply hold your phone near the recipient’s device, select the send cash option, and Apple Cash handles the rest. It’s like AirDrop, but for money.

2. Rewards and Installments in Apple Pay

Apple Wallet now lets users view and redeem their rewards or points directly through Apple Pay, both online and in apps. Additionally, accessing installment financing options from your bank is now more seamless than ever.

3. Event Tickets and New Event Guides

The redesigned event tickets feature brings a host of new functionalities, including an integrated event guide. This guide combines essential venue information with personalized recommendations from Apple apps.

Apple continues to push the envelope with these enhancements, ensuring that Apple Wallet remains a central hub for users' financial transactions.

What do you think about these updates? Let me know in the comments below👇

Cheers,

Marcel

PAYMENTS NEWS

🇺🇸 Apple announced "Tap to pay for Apple Cash" at its annual WWDC event. Explore more in this live blog coverage and check out all the Apple Wallet updates the company announced.

🇯🇴 Eastnets, a global player in compliance and payment solutions, has announced a strategic partnership with iPiD, a provider of beneficiary name and bank account verification services aimed to enhance payment security and efficiency for financial institutions, protecting customers and suppliers against global financial fraud.

🇬🇧 Equals Money, a payments solutions provider, declared its expansion into Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) during the Money20/20 Europe event. This move aims to broaden its product range , reflecting the company's focus on offering financial solutions across various sectors.

🇬🇧 The UK’s Payments Systems Regulator says new fraud reimbursement rules will proceed as planned. The regulator told PYMNTS that it still plans to roll out regulations requiring banks and payment companies to reimburse victims of authorized push payment (APP) fraud up to £415,000 ($527,000) for each claim.

🇮🇳 STICPAY integrates UPI to expand Indian e-Wallet market. For STICPAY users in India, the partnership now enables them to enjoy greater accessibility to their funds , and to leverage the widespread adoption and convenience of UPI across the country.

🇰🇪 AIRTEL Africa has appointed Network International as its payment processor. Through this partnership, Airtel Africa believes it will be well equipped to navigate the dynamic landscape of digital finance , drive innovation and deliver unparalleled value to its users and stakeholders.

🇦🇺 Australian BNPL art company with 'potential to be $1 billion business' on brink of collapse. After almost 10 years of growth, Art Money has run out of operating capital , the difficult decision has been made to pause business operations while recapitalizing, its founder and CEO said in a statement on Art Money's website.

🇮🇳 Initial public offerings (IPO) of Walmart's Flipkart marketplace and PhonePe digital payments platform could take a couple of years, Walmart executive Dan Bartlett said. Walmart may put an initial public offering of PhonePe ahead of Flipkart , even though Flipkart is a more mature business, he added.

💳 Global real-time transactions expected to hit 575 billion by 2028. This would achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17%. By that time, real-time payments are anticipated to comprise more than 27% of all electronic payments worldwide.

GOLDEN NUGGET

Orchestration 🤝 Tokenization

The perfect date/a does exist in Payments:

What is Payment Orchestration:

Payment orchestration is a software solution that connects merchants to multiple PSPs, acquirers, payment partners.

It unites most aspects of the online payment process in one place, including payment authorization, transaction routing, reconciliation, payouts, ledgers, analytics and payment settlement details.

The purpose is to remove complexity for merchants by enabling them to take advantage of working with multiple PSPs and route payments based on a variety of factors, including:

► Payment processor availability

► Best fee conditions

► Highest authorization rates

► Locality / Currencies

► Local Payment Methods

► etc...

Connecting to multiple providers can help protect against failed payments and reduce costs BUT an Orchestrator remains the potential point of failure.

Though a Payment Orchestrator is a crucial part of any good payment infrastructure, not all solutions on the market include important features like:

👉 Native Token Vault Storage

👉 Payment analytics

👉 etc…

Businesses, especially enterprise merchants with high transaction volumes, should both look:

1️⃣ All-in-one: Beyond payment orchestration for providers that cover the entire spectrum of payment

2️⃣ Mitigate Risk by storing their Payments Data (the most crucial component of any transaction) in a specialized external Token Vault. Worst comes to worst, if an Orchestrator or PSP fails, your payments data is available and ready to be used by alternative providers.

What is Tokenization in Payments:

Tokenization is the process of replacing your personal payments information (not only) with a token stored in a PCI-Compliant token vault owned by the token creator, which can be an acquirer, issuer, 3rd party token vault & network or payment processor.

In simple terms, it’s taking consumers & merchants payments DATA, placing that into a token and storing that in a secure and accessible location.

Benefits of Tokenization:

🔸 Ensure PCI DSS compliance

🔸 Control costs

🔸 Increase payments efficiency

🔸 Reduce the risk of data breaches

🔸 Improve the customer experience

Orchestration 🤝 Tokenization Providers:

Ultimately, everything is about data. You need your payments data to be securely stored and accessible at will.

It is the foundation of all transactions globally. While Payment Orchestrators route payments to multiple PSPs, Tokenization providers’ route your payments data to Orchestrators, PSP and any company in payments.

An Orchestrator is a great-to-have solution, bringing flexibility and speed to market.

A Tokenization Provider, is a must.

Both together, that’s flexibility, cost efficiency, redundancy and a scalable payment infrastructure.

Source: Payrails & ACI Worldwide

And I highly recommend following my partner at Connecting the dots in payments... Arthur Bedel 💳 ♻️ for more great updates like this one👌

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