Affiliate Disclosure
If you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Read our ethics policy.

Apple expands Apple Pay Cash testing to retail employees ahead of public release, report says

Last updated

Apple has reportedly extended an internal test of its forthcoming Apple Pay Cash feature to include retail employees, a report said Friday, suggesting the peer-to-peer payments solution is ripe for public release.

Apple began rolling out the feature to retail employees today, asking workers to install the latest iOS 11.1 beta and a special device certificate in order to enable the P2P function, reports MacRumors. Employees taking part in the internal evaluation are required to whitelist iCloud accounts in order to use the service.

Evidence of the Apple Pay Cash test first surfaced earlier this month when select corporate employees were granted access to the feature. With an expansion into Apple's vast retail workforce, the company will be provided with a much larger dataset from which to detect and squash bugs prior to release.

Today's report comes with a few new screenshots of the Apple Pay Cash setup process, which requires users to verify their identify by providing a full name, address, social security number and date of birth. According to Apple, the information will be verified using an unnamed identity verification service.

Unveiled at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple Pay Cash is Apple's branded peer-to-peer money transfer solution. Authorized by Apple Pay and integrated into the Messages app, the service lets verified users send payments to other Apple Pay account holders via a simple text interface. Received money is converted into an Apple Pay Cash card that can be used to pay for online or in-store Apple Pay purchases or transferred to a linked bank account.

Both iOS and watchOS devices support the feature.

Like other P2P systems, Apple's version supports both credit and debit cards, though only debit-based transactions are free. Payments accomplished using a credit card incur an industry standard 3 percent fee.

Apple Pay Cash has yet to appear in beta versions of iOS 11.1 issued to developers and public beta testers, but it will likely be included in a final release if the current evaluation process is successful.



10 Comments

🎄
GeorgeBMac 8 Years · 11421 comments

The article says:
"Received money is converted into an Apple Pay Cash card that can be used to pay for online or in-store Apple Pay purchases or transferred to a linked bank account."

I wonder what that "apple pay cash card" is?   And, why they didn't just put it on the user's credit card -- since everybody with ApplePay has a card linked to it.  Paypal has a similar setup where cash just gets credited to your Paypal account then you can use it -- if the balance is sufficient to to cover the cost of the sale.  It always leaves me with a small hanging balance that can't be used.  Currently it's like $3.63 -- too small for anything I want to buy.

Plus, no way am I linking my bank account to anything -- even Apple.  Not in today's world.  If your card gets hacked you have some protection -- but not if its your bank account.  

🍪
SoundJudgment 7 Years · 187 comments

Paypal has a similar setup where cash just gets credited to your Paypal account then you can use it --

Same thing Apple is planning on doing. Only they call it an Apple Pay Card. It's nothing but Virtual Transfers anyway. You don't need to carry any physical card at all. Google does the same thing with their 'Google Wallet' service. The only limiting-difference is Apple is wall-gardening all of their transactions between two registered iMessage users.

As far as not giving them the Checking Account information. If you don't want them to have it? Fine. They will simply hold the funds in the created Apple Account, and you can just use it from there for the transactions, same as Google and Pay Pal do it now for their members. All Apple is doing here is playing catch-up with the other guys.

☕️
sergioz 12 Years · 338 comments

The article says:
"Received money is converted into an Apple Pay Cash card that can be used to pay for online or in-store Apple Pay purchases or transferred to a linked bank account."

I wonder what that "apple pay cash card" is?   And, why they didn't just put it on the user's credit card -- since everybody with ApplePay has a card linked to it.  Paypal has a similar setup where cash just gets credited to your Paypal account then you can use it -- if the balance is sufficient to to cover the cost of the sale.  It always leaves me with a small hanging balance that can't be used.  Currently it's like $3.63 -- too small for anything I want to buy.

Plus, no way am I linking my bank account to anything -- even Apple.  Not in today's world.  If your card gets hacked you have some protection -- but not if its your bank account.  

You got so many misunderstandings, you are one "insanely" confused man. Try reading previous articles by appleinsider about upcoming update it will make sense, I promise.

AF_Hitt 7 Years · 144 comments

The article says:
"Received money is converted into an Apple Pay Cash card that can be used to pay for online or in-store Apple Pay purchases or transferred to a linked bank account."

I wonder what that "apple pay cash card" is?   And, why they didn't just put it on the user's credit card -- since everybody with ApplePay has a card linked to it.  Paypal has a similar setup where cash just gets credited to your Paypal account then you can use it -- if the balance is sufficient to to cover the cost of the sale.  It always leaves me with a small hanging balance that can't be used.  Currently it's like $3.63 -- too small for anything I want to buy.

Plus, no way am I linking my bank account to anything -- even Apple.  Not in today's world.  If your card gets hacked you have some protection -- but not if its your bank account.  

I’m, this is the whole point of the Apple Pay cash card, so you don’t have to link a credit card to the service. You can have a prepaid card simply for transfers, and I’m sure you’ll be able to reload it whenever you want to, but this would effectively be your primary and only Apple Pay card if you wanted it to

🎅
douglas bailey 15 Years · 306 comments

Transferring/Receiving money into this Apple Pay Cash card will be much faster than transferring into your bank debit card.