Apple Announced Apple Pay NFC Stickers And Here’s Why It Matters

Apple has announced new functionality that allows Apple Pay to be automatically triggered using NFC stickers — without having an app installed on your phone.

You’ll soon be able to hop on a Bird scooter with a tap of your phone even if you’ve never used Bird before, pay your parking meter without having to type in a spot number, and even buy clothing shipped to your home with one tap of your phone on merchandise at Bonobos. Apple is also planning to enable instant enrollment for loyalty cards in the near future at places like Dairy Queen, Panera Bread, Yogurtland, Jimmy John’s, Dave & Busters, and Caribou Coffee.

One tap payments are not particularly new, and in some countries QR Code based payments are the de facto standard. Consumers are hungry for mobile payments and merchants are eager to adopt. Just look at Starbucks — with 40% of transactions now happening within their mobile app. Add in the fact that 74 of the 100 top US retailers are using Apple Pay and you have some real adoption potential. (Side note: I honestly don’t remember the last time I ordered at a Starbucks counter. Now I just order on the app, pick up, and go.)

Here’s the key to all of this: are you really going to download every single retailer app in the future? Probably not.