Apple have teamed up with major banks in order to turn the new iPhones into mobile wallets, according to various reports.
Bloomberg say that Apple have partnered with Visa and MasterCard, and will announce their mobile payments move on 9th September, at the product event launching the new iPhones.
Bloomberg’s source said Apple plan to use both the NFC chip for proximity payments, and their TouchID feature to let users quickly pay for goods.
Re/code also published a report quoting a source close to the matter who said an agreement with American Express had also been made.
While this development is expected to be related to purchases in brick-and-mortar stores, once the groundwork has been laid this could be expanded into mobile transactions on online stores and sites, such as dating services.
Apple said they have around 800m credit cards on file, and have long been expected to utilise this huge trove of details by moving into mobile payments.
In June it was discovered that Apple’s iOS 8 will be able to scan and input credit card details so users can make faster payments online.
When a user is paying for something on Safari while using their iPhone or iPad, an option will come up to “Scan a Credit Card”.
Apple also announced that they will open up their TouchID fingerprint scanner to all app developers — so users can bypass login information when opening up an app.
GDI recently released our mobile payments report, which explores the relationship between online dating and mobile payments, which you can download for free here.