Sources: Apple Pay coming to mobile websites, will be available to Safari users on iPad and iPhone with Touch ID this year
Apple Pay Coming to Mobile Websites Before Holiday Shopping Season — Apple Pay is finally ready to move beyond apps. — Apple has been telling potential partners …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple Pay has lived inside native apps since launch, with its only geographic expansion being a planned push into Canada. Moving it to mobile websites ahead of the holiday shopping season closes the biggest gap in the service: shoppers browsing in Safari on iPhone and iPad currently have to fall back to typed card forms at checkout.
The arc since then confirms the strategy compounded — Apple extended web checkout to Macs authenticating via iPhone Touch ID, pushed into merchant acceptance with Tap to Pay alongside Stripe, and by iOS 16 beta 4 was forced to open Apple Pay to Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, likely under pressure from the EU's Digital Markets Act.
First-order effects
- Safari users on iPhone and iPad gain one-touch checkout on mobile websites using Touch ID, removing the app-install requirement that previously gated Apple Pay online.
- Merchants gain a web checkout path timed for the holiday shopping season, targeting cart abandonment from manual card entry on small screens.
Second-order effects
- Rival mobile wallets are pressured to match browser-based checkout or cede the highest-intent moment in mobile commerce — the payment step — to Apple's authenticated flow.
- Payment networks and processors gain a new integration surface, but pricing power tilts toward whoever controls the biometric authentication layer, which is Apple's.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, wallet services consolidate around platform owners who control both the device and the browser — until regulation intervenes, as the Digital Markets Act's apparent role in forcing Apple Pay into non-Safari browsers suggests.
- The same playbook later extends to the merchant side via Tap to Pay, pointing toward Apple owning both halves of a transaction — the consumer's wallet and the retailer's terminal.
The trend: Apple Pay is expanding from a single-surface app feature into every point of the payment chain — web, cross-browser, and merchant terminals — with regulators increasingly deciding where the platform walls come down.