Hidden Feature in Apple Pay

Apple Pay

So, bad news: my wallet got stolen yesterday. I won’t go into the details, except to say that it’s basically my fault that it got swiped. There wasn’t a lot of money in it, but there was a nice picture of my daughter that I’ll miss. Of course, aside from losing cash and a photo, the worst part of losing a wallet is that I had to spend yesterday morning canceling all my credit cards and, when the new cards arrive, I have to re-enter new card numbers across the many subscription services that hold my payment information on file.

One small bright spot though: I discovered today that for the credit cards that I had connected to Apple Pay, each respective bank went ahead and updated my Apple Pay information with the new card number. So even though I had no identification (my driver’s license was taken too) and no way to get cash from an ATM today, I was still able to buy lunch and pick up some goods at the drug store—with just my phone. I didn’t have to do a thing; everything was taken care of automatically and my bank sent me an email saying that it had been done before I realized it was even possible.

This is not the kind of feature you ever really want to discover for yourself, much less actually benefit from, but it impressed me greatly. It also confirms for me the notion that of all the many fronts that Apple is moving on, their work on Apple Pay is among their best initiatives right now. Of course I would like to see wider adoption of Apple Pay by retailers, but aside from sheer scale, almost everything else about the way Apple Pay works strikes me as exactly the way it should work.

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