Pay for Parking and Scooter Rentals

Apple’s VP of Apple Pay, Jennifer Bailey, specifically announced an upcoming new feature last month at the TRANSACT Tech conference in Las Vegas that would allow for NFC tags to trigger online Apple Pay payments, allowing users to pay for services where dedicated POS terminals aren’t practical.

The examples given by Bailey included scooter rentals, with Bird scooters already set to be one of the launch partners, as well as parking meters from PayByPhone and Bonobos clothing stores. The feature will allow you to pay for services like these simply by holding your iPhone near a device, without needing to download an app, which seems to be the magical part of this feature.

It’s not entirely clear yet how this will work in practical terms, but presumably iOS 13 will provide the necessary user interface to confirm payment, possibly allowing the user to select any necessary options in the process, and the payment itself will be made directly from the iPhone, rather than the POS terminal.