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Apple Pay is now live in 76 markets and support 20 payment networks around the world, and they continue to evolve. In terms of what's next, Apple Pay executives say that they are going to go ”beyond payments” to replace the physical wallet with a secure, private and convenient digital wallet to manage everything from event tickets and keys to government IDs and transit passes.
Indeed, writing at the time of the launch of Apple Pay, Stephen Vass pointed out that while it had been recognised since the early 2000s that contactless (ie, Near Field Communication, NFC) was the preferred choice of technology to get the mobile payment industry rolling, the wrangling between the bank and the mobile operators over who “essentially owned” the consumer resulted in nothing but delay.
