iOS 16 shows Apple Pay in Google Chrome. Why it's a big deal for both users and Apple
The Apple Pay button pops up in iOS 16 beta 4 even if you use Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and another third-party browsers
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny
🧭 Safari isn’t required if you want to use Apple Pay in a 3rd party browser
💸 Apple’s iOS 16 beta 4 shows Apple Pay buttons in Chrome, Edge, etc.
🍎 It doesn’t need you to use Safari as much as it wants you to use Apple Pay
💰 Timing: Launches ahead of Apple Pay Later and anti-trust pressure
🙅♂️ Doesn’t work on macOS outside of Safari just yet (technical reasons)
The iOS 16 is poised to give Apple Pay its Safari-free breakout moment for those of you who use Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or Mozilla Firefox on your iPhone.
It’s specifically found in iOS 16 developer beta 4 and you can see a “Continue with Apple Pay button” show up in MacRumors’ Steve Moser’s tweet. This will allow more users to quickly check out with Apple Pay vs having to put in their credit card digits.
Why this is a big deal for end users
Apple Pay is fast. We know this from each PS5 restock where the websites of Target and GameStop (the latter has a terribly clunky app) had the Apple Pay button in the Safari browser, often acting as the quickest way to check out and secure a console.
Contrast that with entering your debit or credit card digits and then trying to send the transaction through Target and GameStop’s servers as they were being hammered by millions of people trying to get a PS5. It was a nightmare.
People who use Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, Brave and so forth will finally be able to check out just as quickly as Safari users – at least on the iPhone. All iOS browsers use Apple’s WebKit rendering engine, whereas the less-locked-down macOS allows for third-party rendering engines, thus they’ll need an update, suggests Moser.
All of this is going to be important in advance of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, as the best discounts go within seconds. Those deeply discounted 4KTV lightning deals won’t last for more than a minute in some cases. Same thing with MacBook deals, iPad deals, and the inevitable all-time lowest AirPods price and AirTags price.
Why it’s a big deal for Apple
My thinking is that Apple doesn’t need you to use Safari as much as it wants you to use its financial services like Apple Pay, the Apple Card, and, soon, Apple Pay Later. It’s been a success story in each Apple earnings call, though some analysts detect a year-over-year slowdown, as per CNBC (12% YoY growth isn’t good enough?).
Key: Apple is about to launch Apple Pay Later, which will let customers split purchases into four equal payments over six weeks with no interest or fees to pay. This “Buy Now, Pay” Later type of service will launch this fall in partnership with Mastercard, and that’s perfectly timed with enabling more users to take advantage of it, regardless of their mobile browser.
There’s one more possible motive: Apple is facing anti-competitive crackdowns in the EU and The Verge opines that this could be tied to that. Surely it can’t hurt to point to this latest move to counter any accusations.
iOS 16 will launch this fall, likely around the same time as the iPhone 14 release date that’s expected to be in September, and include features like the ability to edit and undo messages sent in iMessage, live activities within notifications, and a far more customizable lockscreen.