Walgreens issued a notice to its employees preparing them for an Apple Pay launch date of October 18, MacRumors reported.
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Apple's upcoming card-free payment system was announced back at the iPhone 6 reveal last month. With it, Apple users can pay for purchases at participating retailers using the NFC chips in their iPhone 6, 6 Plus or the upcoming Apple Watch. Back at the reveal, Walgreens was announced as one of the larger participating retailers that would be rolling out NFC support in their locations. With this memo, it looks like Walgreens will be all ready to go with Apple Pay support by the end of the week.
This could mean that Apple Pay as a whole will launch on Saturday. As the MacRumors report points out, though, it wouldn't be unlike Apple to announce that Apple Pay will be going live during its upcoming October 16 media event with Walgreens simply implementing support two days after the fact.
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With Apple Pay, Apple users can save their debit and credit card information into their phones, information that is then locked through the user's Touch ID. Apple Pay functionality at retail locations will be limited to the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch, as those are the only devices announced thus far that include the NFC chips necessary for "tap to pay" transactions. However, any device with a Touch ID, like the iPhone 5S or the rumored upcoming iPad, should be able to use Apple Pay for participating digital outlets for online shopping.
Apple will be holding its next media event Thursday, October 16. They're expected to announce the next model of iPad – the one rumored to include Touch ID – as well as new Macs and the upcoming OS X Yosemite operating system.