In the coming years Apple Pay will be gradually expanded beyond the United States to various other markets, with the UK launch expected to come in just over a week. What would be the next logical frontier for Apple’s payments service? Would the company allow people to pay each other using Apple Pay? That appears to be a case since Apple has filed for a patent which covers person-to-person payments.
The patent hints that in the future people would be able to send money from one iPhone to another, “two individuals” has been particularly mentioned in the patent which shows that person-to-person payments could be possible through Apple Pay in the future.
In order to conduct the transaction users would have to go through the Wallet app and both the sender and the recipient would have to authorize the transaction using the fingerprint sensor, also known as Touch ID.
The patent does mention that all data that’s transferred between the iPhones as well as the payment processor will be encrypted to ensure users’ security at all times.
Payments would then be credited to the user’s “payment vehicles,” which basically means bank accounts and cards that can accept funds from third parties.
It isn’t mentioned in the patent if and when this functionality might be added to iPhones, but at least we know that Apple has the required patents now if it ever intends on doing this in the future.