The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is right around the corner, and there’s a lot of talk about what might be unveiled next month. According to “two people briefed on the product”, one announcement will be a new rewards program for Apple Pay, the mobile wallet service introduced last year.
A loyalty scheme could be a good move to help popularize the Apple Pay service – though we don’t have any specifics yet, any kind of rewards, points or cash back promotions will give potential users a reason to set up and start using the wireless payment technology.
Mobile wallet payments have yet to reach the big-time – currently only selected retailers accept payments through Apple Pay, and only the latest Apple devices are equipped with the technology to make a transaction.
Amidst competition from the creatively-named Android Pay and Samsung Pay, these types of payments should increase in popularity as more and more retailers start accepting them. Apple is clearly hoping that a rewards program will help encourage more of the public to use its system.
So far Apple Pay is only available in the US, but it’s expected that the service will be made available in Canada later this year, with a view to slowly taking it worldwide in the future.
We’ll have to wait until the official announcement for the details of any changes to Apple Pay, but it’s likely that any type of rewards program would launch as part of iOS 9 – which we’re anticipating will be a big focus of WWDC.
Rewards program for Apple Pay set to be announced at WWDC. http://t.co/QQ0pYNccDd pic.twitter.com/7dmStGJuD8
— TapSmart (@TapSmart) May 28, 2015