As Apple celebrates the 10th anniversary of Apple Pay, Apple Pay and Apple Wallet chief Jennifer Bailey today did an interview with The Points Guy, providing some insight into current and future Apple Pay-related features like car key and ID integration in the Wallet app.
Apple Pay wasn't an immediate hit with consumers, but Bailey said that Apple "worked really hard" to establish a "great customer experience" over the last decade. As mobile payments via Apple Pay have become widely available and more well-known, Apple and Bailey are focusing on expanding the capabilities of the Wallet app to make it more useful.
Back in 2020, Apple introduced support for car key, an implementation of the Digital Key standard that uses NFC. The feature is designed to allow iPhone and Apple Watch users to store a key for a compatible vehicle in the Wallet app, and multiple manufacturers have implemented support. Apple is working with more than 30 car manufacturers on car keys.
As support for car keys expands, Bailey sees a future where digital keys are available for rentals.
Being able to book a car rental, confirm your authentication and identity ... you can imagine that a car rental company is going to issue you a digital key, and that key could be used to unlock and use a car.
Some hotel chains have already implemented support for accessing a hotel room with a key stored in Wallet, so it's not hard to imagine this kind of functionality also expanding to cars at some point.
Apple Pay's transit usage is "just fantastic," according to Bailey, and "people absolutely love it." Apple in 2022 launched Wallet support for Digital IDs and driver's licenses, and while that's taken some time to take off, Bailey is confident adoption will pick up because the option for a digital ID is "really profound."
It'll be a long-term journey like we had with Apple Pay. It's helping states understand how our approach is privacy-protected and highly secure, how we don't have the data, and how we don't keep any association with where you're presenting your ID.
Bailey told The Points Guy that Apple is only at the beginning of its "long-term vision to replace the wallet," but the core Apple Pay technology that kicked off the effort "is perfect."