On the first day of Apple’s developer conference this year, there were a lot of products ranging from software to hardware announced but one thing that might have gone under the radar is Apple Pay’s new peer-to-peer payments on Apple Pay.
The new feature will be introduced with iOS 11 and will be known as Pay Cash. Pay Cash will exist within Apple Pay app and will allow iPhone users to send money and receive money from their Apple Wallet.
The new feature is said to be easy to use as it will be well integrated with Siri. If there is a discussion about money on the Messages app, then Siri will suggest you to use Apple Pay to send money to your friend. You can also ask Siri to pay someone a certain amount through voice commands.
Once you have sent the money, the recipient will see the money show in their Pay Cash account.
You can use the money in the Pay Cash account to pay for goods and services using Apple Pay, buy apps on App Store or transfer it to your bank account.
The peer-to-peer payments and Pay Cash will be available in the U.S. on the iPhone SE, iPhone 6, 6s and 7, other apple devices such as the iPad Pro and Apple Watch to get support later in the year.
If you still have not realized the implication of this new services, let me try to explain. We recently saw Telegram introduce bot payments just the other day. With Telegram’s bot payments, users can easily pay for goods and services through Telegram bots that are connected to your credit card.
With Pay Cash, you can send money directly to your friends without incurring any money transfer charges as the money will be in your virtual Pay Cash account wallet and you will also not be required to leave the messaging app just to transfer a certain amount to someone. If by some miracle this service was launched in Kenya, I am buying an iPhone.
On the same note, WhatsApp was rumoured to be working on peer-to-peer payments as well and was to launch in India, I hope this move by Apple will push the Zuckerberg-run company to hasten their foot steps because I am so tired of M-Pesa transaction charges!
