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Comment by square_usual | Hacker News Reader

Apple has had P2P payments for a while. Yesterday's announcement was that now you can tap to pay for those. Before, you'd have to send money via iMessage.

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I think it's most likely still going to be sending money "via iMessage" (or more precisely: via a book transfer between two Green Dot Visa prepaid card accounts, addressed by an iCloud address and initiated over iMessage in UX terms).

What is new here exactly? This is AppleCash, which has been around for years.

If I'm understanding correctly, the difference is that it's going through VISA directly. Kind of like how you can send someone a Starbucks gift card through iMessage / Messages app, without it ever going through Apple Cash technically.

How so? It only works between two Apple Cash accounts, so it can just be a book transfer within the bank maintaining these (Green Dot), no Visa required.

Or do they now allow it between two non-Apple-Cash debit cards? That would indeed require some network to work across banks.

In the case of Starbucks, they're taking advantage of an API within the Messages app, so as long as a third party implements something similar to what Starbucks is doing, I assume any other banking app could do the same, like Zelle could theoretically have their app allow you to just send cash via Messages if they implement the code needed for the Messages app. Now whether or not Apple would allow it is another story. I appreciate them gate keeping garbage from their app store, but they shouldnt just gate keep things they themselves do, its anti-competitive.

Yeah, but the new feature presented yesterday is not that. It's just a new (and definitely useful!) contact discovery and payment request initiation channel for Apple Cash (which has been around for a few years now), as far as I can tell.

I can pay you by tapping the top of my iPhone to the top of your iPhone. https://youtu.be/Own9MiaP57o?t=270

I was/am a little confused, too, but Apple specifically called out not needing to share phone numbers/contact info, so that’s probably it.

It’s brokered via NFC now. Tap to pay with no business account.

Yes and no. It's still a cash-equivalent transaction, requiring you to either have an Apple Cash balance and/or an attached checking account or debit card (in the USA at least).

It's also only available in the US, I believe.

Too late now to edit my original comment but this is what I missed: you can tap two phones together to transfer p2p. I.e. not iMessage mediated.

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/11/tap-to-cash-ios-18-pay-...

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