You’ll Soon Be Able to Use Apple Pay in Any Browser

While Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynotes are always filled with fun and exciting new feature announcements for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and more, there’s never enough time to cover everything that’s coming.

However, WWDC is a week-long event packed with developer sessions. While these can be very technical — they’re designed for those who plan to write code for iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps — they often reveal new features that might otherwise fly under the radar.

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Such is the case with the recent developer session on What’s new in Wallet and Apple Pay, which, a MacRumors points out, contained a pretty significant reveal: the ability to use Apple Pay in Chrome, Firefox, or virtually any desktop browser — on a Mac or a Windows PC.

While it’s been possible to use Apple Pay on the web for years, it’s been limited to Safari on the Mac. Even if an online store offered support for Apple Pay, the button would be invisible in Chrome and other browsers, leaving folks to assume it’s not even an option.

That’s understandable, considering the security requirements involved in Apple Pay. Even in macOS Sonoma, using Apple Pay in Safari is tied to the Apple ID and Wallet on your Mac. Plugging other browsers like Chrome into that secure framework or making it work on Windows the way it does in Safari on Mac is complicated at best and may even be impossible to do securely.

However, it looks like Apple has devised another solution. Taking a page from how Passkeys work, e-commerce sites can now present an Apple Pay payment request as a scannable code, similar to those used by App Clips.

While Apple Pay will continue to work in Safari the way it always has, when customers make a purchase and check out in another browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Edge, the code will be shown on the screen instead of the standard Apple Pay prompt. The customer then scans the code using the iPhone Camera app, which brings up an Apple Pay prompt where they can complete the purchase on their iPhone in the usual manner.

With iOS 18, you’ll be able to improve conversion performance and extend the Apple Pay user experience to any device with a browser, including those outside the Apple ecosystem. Users on iOS 18 will be able to use Apple Pay on any non-Safari browser by simply scanning a code with their iPhone to securely and privately complete the payment. Tanya Al-Rehani, Wallet and Apple Pay Engineer

This new capability will require the customer to have an iPhone running iOS 18. Web developers of e-commerce sites will also need to modify their Apple Pay code to support the new feature. However, that appears to be a relatively simple change, and online stores that already support Apple Pay will likely be eager to broaden payment options for their customers. That means some of the bigger online merchants may already support this by the time iOS 18 is released to the public in September.

Since Apple Pay on the web uses open Javascript technologies, it should be supported in any modern web browser, including those on Linux and Android devices.

Apple is also expanding Apple Pay funds transfers to the web, allowing money to be withdrawn from a bank account or stored value account onto a card stored in Apple Pay, such as a debit card.