Apple CEO Tim Cook Announcing Apple Pay

As announced on September 9, the popular drug store Walgreens will be one of Apple Inc.’s major launch partners for its payments system. According to a memo sent to Walgreens employees, they are to prepare for the upcoming launch of Apple Pay set for October 18. The memo states that iPhone 6 customers will be able to pay for their Walgreens purchases using Apple Pay by simply tapping their device “to the upper portion of the PIN pad to pay for their purchase”.

A Saturday launch is unusual, but not surprising considering Apple Pay is designed for in-store shopping; a weekend launch would allow consumers to try out the service. It is also possible that Apple will launch the payments service at their October 16 event, when they are likely to debut a new iPad Air, Retina iMacs and possibly a new Retina iPad mini.

In addition to Walgreens other Apple Pay partners include McDonalds, Macy’s and Staples, to name a few.

According to the training material acquired by website 9to5mac, Apple Pay will be a clean and easy to use interface that will allow for easy management of payments.

Apple will bundle Apple Pay into the Passbook app. In the same way you add store loyalty cards and movie tickets, you will now be able to add credit and debit cards. Mark Gurman, from 9to5mac, says,  “Passbook will be able to store up to eight credit/debit cards, according to the training materials”.

Apple’s emphasis for Apple Pay will be “ease of use and security”. One of the features that will achieve this is the automatic update of cards that expire. “If a credit card expires,” Gurman writes, “Passbook will automatically update the card with the new expiration date from the credit card company. Users will not need to delete and re-add the card; they will simply receive a push notification alerting them that the changed occurred.”

This rumor coincides with the news that Twitter is offering peer-to-peer money transfer  in France.