Apple Pay Is The Most Important News Out Of Today's Launch Event

Welcome to the war on the wallet.

Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook.

Stephen Lam / Reuters

Apple Pay might not sound as sexy as the new iPhone 6 or Apple Watch — is "payment services" ever? — but it ended up being the most important announcement out of Apple's splashy launch event today.

Apple, beginning with new technology on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch, is aiming to zap the wallet and allow customers to pay for items with their phones and a touch of the finger as early as next month. The company has partnered with American Express, MasterCard, Visa and the most popular domestic banks, which together account for 83% of credit card purchase volume in the U.S., as it works toward its goal. It's also signed on a handful of top retailers including Whole Foods, Macy's, Walgreens, McDonald's and Sephora for Apple Pay, so that customers with the new devices can actually walk into stores, tap their phones to check out and "sign" for purchases with a fingerprint.

iPhone users will also be able to make in-app purchases the same way, without having to enter shipping and billing data every time, as Target excitedly pointed out earlier today. Companies like Uber, Groupon, and Panera have all agreed to use Apple Pay in their apps.

JPMorgan Chase Chief Financial Officer Marianne Lake hailed Apple Pay as "the future" at a conference Tuesday.

While major credit card companies and technology giants have been working for years towards making mobile payments seamless, it's been tough to get consumers and merchants to buy into their solutions on a large scale. Apple, however, seems poised to succeed where others like Google Wallet haven't.

Perhaps most significantly, the new iPhones and smartwatch will come equipped with Apple Pay technology (including NFC, or near-field communication, antennas), and the company will make it easy for customers to import the hundreds of millions of cards that they already have on file with the iTunes Store.

"Other services require the consumer to make a specific gesture — they have to do something special to go and get the payments services, whereas with this, you're essentially going to get it as a default," Mung Ki Woo, Group Executive of MasterCard's Mobile division, said in an interview with BuzzFeed, noting the introduction is "a milestone" for the mobile payment industry. "Therefore, consumer activation of this service is likely to be high."

"As a consumer, you will just have a very seamless and magical moment when you're checking out," said Rajat Taneja, Visa's executive vice president of technology. "You will just take your phone and any wearable and bring it close to the PoS device and you're done."

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