Apple Pay has landed on the web just in time for macOS Sierra

News
By Darren Allan
published

Although Mac owners will need an iPhone or Apple Watch hooked up for Touch ID authentication

Apple Pay

Following the release of iOS 10, Apple Pay functionality has now arrived on the web at large, and some sites are already catering for the payment system – with Mac users set to benefit from the service with the release of macOS Sierra next week.

Currently, Apple Pay is now live with Time Inc, allowing folks to purchase subscriptions to its various publications (and other offerings in due course), and other payment services like Shopify and Squarespace have announced support for Apple's system on the web.

Expect a lot more websites to adopt Apple Pay going forward.

Jen Wong, President of Digital of Time Inc, commented: "Offering Apple Pay as a checkout option for our products and services provides an easier, frictionless purchase experience for existing and new customers."

Compatible devices

You can make purchases using Apple Pay and the Touch ID fingerprint scanner in Safari using your iPhone 6 or later, or iPad Air 2, iPad Pro, or iPad mini 3 or better – or on any 2012 or later Mac running macOS Sierra.

With the Mac, you'll authenticate your purchase via a hook-up with an iPhone 6 (or later) running iOS 10 or an Apple Watch running watchOS 3. So this option won't be available to everyone with a Mac computer.

The latest incarnation of Apple's desktop OS, Sierra, will be released next Tuesday, although you can already download the final release candidate which should be the same as the finished version to all intents and purposes (barring the discovery of any major flaws).

Sierra brings Macs and iOS devices even closer together, with elements like a Universal Clipboard which allows for direct cutting and pasting between Apple computers and the iPhone/iPad. It also introduces the ability to unlock your Mac simply by being in the proximity of the machine with your Apple Watch or iOS gadget.

Apple Pay launched in the UK in July 2015, and back in April of this year, Barclays signed up to the service, the last major bank in this country to do so.

Via: MacRumors

Darren Allan

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).