Sources: Instagram is testing ads that use 3D Touch and Apple Pay
Instagram experimenting with 3D Touch ads and Apple Pay Chris Davies / SlashGear : Instagram: No, we're not testing 3D Touch adverts Eric Slivka / MacRumors : Wegmans Shoppers Club Card Showing Up in Apple Pay, but Full Rollout Not Coming Until 2016 Nick Statt / The Verge : Instagram is testing interactive iPhone ads that use 3D Touch and Apple Pay Jordan Kahn / 9to5Mac : Instagram reportedly testing ads with 3D Touch & Apple Pay integration & other Apple Pay news Nick Salerni / iPhone in Canada Blog : Apple Introduces New ‘Shopping’ Category on the iOS App Store Buster Hein / Cult of Mac : Instagram beefs up ads with Apple Pay and 3D Touch AppleInsider : Apple singles out shopping apps in new iOS App Store category [u] Evan Selleck / iPhone Hacks : Instagram is testing new ads that use 3D Touch and Apple Pay Joseph Keller / iMore : Instagram reportedly testing 3D Touch-powered ads, Apple Pay support MacDailyNews : Instagram said to test next-gen ads that leverage Apple's 3D Touch, Apple Pay; Instagram denies Seth Porges / Forbes : Apple Launches New ‘Shopping’ App Store Category With A Ton Of Customer-Luring Deals Nate Swanner / The Next Web : Instagram is testing 3D Touch ads that let you buy stuff with Apple Pay Mitchel Broussard / MacRumors : Instagram Begins Testing Ads That Use 3D Touch and Apple Pay Billy Steele / Engadget : Instagram reportedly testing ads that use 3D Touch and Apple Pay (update) Christian Zibreg / iDownloadBlog.com : Instagram testing interactive shopping ads with Force Touch, In-App Purchases and Apple Pay Mike Beasley / 9to5Mac : Apple launches new Shopping category in the App Store promoting Apple Pay
Context & Ripple Effects
Digiday's sources described Instagram running interactive iPhone ad units that respond to 3D Touch presses and close the loop with Apple Pay checkout — a claim Instagram publicly denied, while Apple's own moves the same week (a new Shopping category in the iOS App Store, Wegmans' Shoppers Club Card surfacing ahead of its planned 2016 rollout) showed the wallet side actively recruiting merchants.
Read against what came after, the report reads as an early probe of a direction Instagram pursued anyway: shoppable photo tags for US iOS users arrived within a year, native in-app checkout with brands like Nike and Kylie Cosmetics followed in 2019, and by 2022 purchases ran through Meta Pay inside DMs — meaning the platform ultimately kept checkout on its own rails rather than Apple's.
First-order effects
- If the test was live, participating advertisers would be the first to buy an ad format where a hard press opens product detail and Apple Pay closes the sale without leaving the feed — while Instagram's denial leaves brands unable to confirm availability.
Second-order effects
- Apple gets a marquee consumer app showcasing both 3D Touch and Apple Pay at exactly the moment it is pushing wallet adoption through the App Store's new Shopping category and retailer integrations like Wegmans.
Third-order effects
- Whether or not this unit shipped, the corpus shows the endpoint: platforms absorbing the entire purchase funnel — discovery, product detail, and now payment (Meta Pay in chat) — displacing external wallets and browsers from social commerce.
The trend: Since 2015, social platforms have moved checkout in-app step by step — from borrowing wallets like Apple Pay to building native payment rails — turning feeds into closed-loop storefronts.