There are a lot of different apps out there to pay friends. Some are neat and trendy, like SnapCash, that allows you to pay a friend through Snapchat by just sending a few keystrokes and the money is taken out securely through a Square account. Facebook has another method, and there’s Venmo that you can link directly to a checking account. I’ve experimented with PayPal to send money to a friend, it took it from a credit card, charged a percentage fee, but was pretty slick in how fast it worked. All these methods are going to go down a notch in a little while though; Apple is coming out with their own method for friends to electronically move money between each other.
ApplePay has been around since the iPhone 6, announced in late 2014. ApplePay is a contact-free payment method where you have a card linked to your iPhone and at participating retailers, you pull out your properly configured iPhone, double-click your touchID with a registered fingerprint and the payment terminal beeps and it’s just like swiping your card. ApplePay has all sorts of security built in to make it more protected than a normal credit or debit card. That same level of protection will be applied to the new feature of ApplePay that will allow friends to transfer money between each other.