MasterCard cardholders with a consumer credit or debit card from BECU, Fifth Third, First Niagara and Huntington National Bank now have access to payments through Apple Pay.
To help consumers use Apple Pay, MasterCard has developed the MasterCard Nearby app, available in the App Store. It helps you find merchants near your current location that accept contactless payments.
Apple announced Apple Pay in September 2014, describing it as “a new category of service designed to transform mobile payments with an easy, secure and private way to pay.” It works with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus through a NFC antenna design, a dedicated chip called the Secure Element, and Touch ID.
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, says Apple Pay is easy to set up, so hundreds of millions of users can simply add their credit or debit card on file from their iTunes Store account. Apple Pay will also work with the newly announced Apple Watch, extending Apple Pay to over 200 million owners of iPhone 5, iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s worldwide.