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"If you blinked during Apple's big WWDC keynote event on Monday, you might have missed the part that hinted at the company's mobile payments strategy.\nA little more than 90 minutes into the two-hour presentation, Apple's SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi pulled up a slide about Touch ID, the fingerprint scanner introduced with the iPhone 5s last year. He then announced that developers would soon have access to applying the feature to their apps through a new API.\nSee also: The Slow Evolution of Apple's Online Store\nFederighi then showed off how Mint, a popular personal finance application, would take advantage of the Touch ID API to let users scan their fingers to log in to the app rather than typing out a password.\nThat portion of the keynote lasted less than 70 seconds, but it caught the attention of some Apple analysts.\n\"While no new hardware was announced, we see services revenue upside from iCloud, Health and smart home-related apps and view developer access to Touch ID as a step in the direction of mobile payments,\" Katy Huberty, an analyst with Morgan Stanley, wrote in an investor note after the event.\n\nCraig Federighi, Apple's SVP of software engineering, unveils the new Touch ID API at WWDC 2014.Image:  AppleEvery few months, reports pop up about Apple's progress \u2014 or lack thereof \u2014 on the mobile payments front. Much of the focus has been on whether Apple will use Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to let users pay with their smartphones at the cash register.\nInstead, Apple has largely avoided the NFC path while pursuing a more multi-pronged approach. It introduced the Passbook app in 2012, which organizes tickets, store cards and coupons in one place and makes them easier to redeem. It has brought iBeacons, which relies on Bluetooth LE technology rather than NFC, to communicate with customers' phones based on their location in the Apple Store.\nAnd then there's Touch ID. As Apple CEO Tim Cook noted on an earnings call in January, \"The mobile payments area in general is one that we\u2019ve been intrigued with, and that was one of the thoughts behind Touch ID.\"\nOne could easily imagine other retail, payment and banking apps using the Touch ID API to boost security and remove some of the friction from the user experience. At least one mobile credit card payment service has already embraced Touch ID.\nApple's strategy, in short, is more focused on serving as a platform to improve the experience of using other payment services \u2014 whether it be Citibank or Square \u2014 rather than attempting to become a full-fledged mobile payment service itself.\n\"Apple makes devices. Everything they do is about making those devices better and more valuable,\" says Benedict Evans, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. \"Do they want to have call centers on five continents if you\u2019re overcharged? Probably not.\"\nWith that in mind, Evans argues that Apple's mobile payment system is already here and taking shape.\n\"You can certainly see one building block after another being put in place, each of which make sense on its own,\" he says. \"Unlike with NFC.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/06/03/apple-mobile-payments-wwdc/>