Apple are making it much easier for your mates to pay you back that money they owe you

No more excuses.

Much like contactless cards, Apple Pay has made paying for stuff in shops, bars and restaurants a lot easier, as all you need to do it swipe your iPhone across the card terminal. But it’s about to introduce an even more convenient feature.

At their Worldwide Developer Conference this evening, Apple announced that Apple Pay are introducing person to person payments. This basically means that you can easily send and receive money to and from your mates via text message. This is a game changer. No more making excuses when someone owes for that round, or their share of the bill, or those train tickets you booked. No more claiming that you don’t have any cash, or there’s no cash machines around.

https://twitter.com/KamVTV/status/871798521413869568 https://twitter.com/khoaphan/status/871790180461662215 https://twitter.com/ramyzab/status/871790389828739073

While it’s good for those of you who are always chasing your friends, tech insiders see it as bad news for Venmo, the PayPal-owned service that already lets you do exactly that. But Venom isn’t anywhere near as universal as simply having an iPhone, and people are seeing this as Apple trying to take over that arena.