With the tenth anniversary of Apple Pay being celebrated, Apple Pay and Apple Wallet chief Jennifer Bailey suggested that current and future Apple Pay-related features like car key and ID integration could find their way into the Wallet app.
Per an interview with The Points Guy, Bailey noted that Apple Pay hadn’t been an immediate hit with consumers, but said that Apple “worked really hard” to establish a “great customer experience” over the last decade. As mobile payments via Apple Pay have become widely available and more well-known, Apple and Bailey are focusing on expanding the capabilities of the Wallet app to make it more useful.
As of 2020, Apple introduced support for car key, an implementation of the Digital Key standard that also uses NFC. This technology allows Apple device users to store a key for a compatible vehicle in the Wallet app, and multiple manufacturers have implemented support. Apple is working with more than 30 car manufacturers on car keys.
Bailey offered the following comments as to where this might be going where rental cars are concerned:
“Being able to book a car rental, confirm your authentication and identity … you can imagine that a car rental company is going to issue you a digital key, and that key could be used to unlock and use a car.”
Bailey also offered the following:
“It’ll be a long-term journey like we had with Apple Pay. It’s helping states understand how our approach is privacy-protected and highly secure, how we don’t have the data, and how we don’t keep any association with where you’re presenting your ID.”
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via MacRumors and The Points Guy