Originally announced at WWDC in June 2022, iOS 16 brings a few tweaks but not a lot of new features for folks outside the United States who use Apple Pay or Apple Wallet.
iOS 16 adds a few extra features to Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, but nothing super exciting or groundbreaking, and unfortunately most of it is limited to the United States.
The ‘big’ new feature is Apple Pay Later – Apple directly taking on the ‘buy now pay later’ services like Afterpay, and letting you use ‘Apple Pay Later’ anywhere that already accepts Apple Pay online or in app. At least BNPL still has a purpose, for brick and mortar stores anyway. Unfortunately – US only.
For those folks lucky enough to have house, office, car and hotel keys or IDs in Wallet, there’s expanded support for using them – eg Users can use their ID in Wallet for apps requiring identity and age verification. To ensure a private and secure experience, only the necessary information required for the transaction will be provided to the app, and the user can review and consent to share it using Face ID or Touch ID.
You also have the ability to share home, hotel, office, and car keys in Wallet through messaging apps, including Messages, Mail, and more. Unfortunately this is largely limited to the United States, with a lack of participating manufacturers or providers mentioning Australia any time soon (eg Hyatt Hotels, Schlage’s door locks) apart from perhaps BMW car keys!
One thing that *will* be available for Australians, is ‘Order Tracking’ – a surprise feature from Apple.
Baked into Wallet, orders paid for with Apple Pay from participating merchants will appear in a new Order section automatically. Merchants can update the order status as your order progresses, and even show ‘collect in store’ information eg a barcode for store staff to scan.
Overall, some nice polish and tweaks come to Wallet in iOS 16, but there isn’t a ‘must have’ change – at least if you’re not in the United States.